A multi-scale high-resolution analysis of global sea surface temperature

Abstract

The Multi-scale Ultra-high Resolution (MUR) sea surface temperature (SST) analysis presents daily SST estimates on a global 0.01°×0.01° grid. The current version (Version 4.1, http://dx.doi.org/10.5067/GHGMR-4FJ04) features the 1-km resolution MODIS retrievals, which are fused with AVHRR GAC, microwave, and in-situ SST data by applying internal correction for relative biases among the data sets. Only the night-time (dusk to dawn locally) satellite SST retrievals are used to estimate the foundation SST. The MUR SST values agree with the GHRSST Multi-Product Ensemble (GMPE) SST field to 0.36°C on average, except in summer-time Arctic region where the existing SST analysis products are known to disagree with each other. The feature resolution of the MUR SST analysis is an order of magnitude higher than most existing analysis products.The Multi-Resolution Variational Analysis (MRVA) method allows the MUR analysis to use multiple synoptic time scales, including a 5-day data window used for reconstruction of mesoscale features and data windows of only few hours for the smaller scale features. Reconstruction of fast evolving small scale features and interpolation over persistent large data voids can be achieved simultaneously by the use of multiple synoptic windows in the multi-scale setting. The MRVA method is also a “mesh-less” interpolation procedure that avoids truncation of the geolocation data during gridding and binning of satellite samples. Future improvements of the MUR SST analysis will include ingestion of day-time MODIS retrievals as well as more recent high-resolution SST retrievals from VIIRS.