Abstract
Three-dimensional (3-D) optimally-interpolated sea surface temperature (SST) field was produced by using AQUA/AMSR-E satellite data, and its limitations were described by comparing the temporal average of sea surface temperatures. The 3-D OI (Optimum Interpolation) SST showed a small error of less than in the central North Pacific, but yielded large errors of greater than at the coastal area where the satellite microwave data were not available. OI SST composite around pixels with no observation due to heavy rainfall or cloudy pixels had estimation errors of . Comparison with temporal means showed a tendency that overall OI SSTs were underestimated around heavy cloudy pixels and smoothed out by reducing the magnitude of SST fronts. In the low-latitude areas near the equator, OI SST field produced discontinuity, originated from the window size for the OI procedure. This was mainly caused by differences in the spatial scale of oceanic features. Infernal Rossby deformation radius, as a measure of spatial stale, showed dominant latitudinal variations with O(1) difference in the North Pacific. This study suggests that OI SST methodology should consider latitudinally-varying size of window and the characteristics of spatial scales of oceanic phenomena with substantial dependency on latitude and vertical structure of density.
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