Comparison of MSG/SEVIRI and drifting buoy derived diurnal warming estimates

Abstract

Hourly SST fields derived from the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infra-Red Imager (SEVIRI) onboard Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) are increasingly used in studies of the diurnal cycle of the oceans. Hourly diurnal warming (DW) estimates can be indeed derived as the difference between SEVIRI derived hourly daytime and predawn SST values. In this paper we compare these estimates with equivalent quantities derived from drifting buoy measurements over the SEVIRI disk. A good agreement between SEVIRI and drifter DW estimates has been found in over 1year of using the operational SEVIRI matchup data base. A small underestimation of diurnal warming amplitude by SEVIRI has been identified for large DW events, mostly due to afternoon convection generating subpixel cloudiness.