Evaluating a satellite-based sea surface temperature by shipboard survey in the Northwest Indian Ocean

Abstract

A summer-time shipboard meteorological survey is described in the Northwest Indian Ocean. Shipboard observations are used to evaluate a satellite-based sea surface temperature (SST), and then find the main factors that are highly correlated with errors. Two satellite data, the first is remote sensing product of a microwave, which is a Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Microwave Imager (TMI), and the second is merged data from the microwave and infrared satellite as well as drifter observations, which is Operational Sea Surface Temperature and Sea Ice Analysis (OSTIA). The results reveal that the daily mean SST of merged data has much lower bias and root mean square error as compared with that from microwave products. Therefore the results support the necessary of the merging infrared and drifter SST with a microwave satellite for improving the quality of the SST. Furthermore, the correlation coefficient between an SST error and meteorological parameters, which include a wind speed, an air temperature, a relative humidity, an air pressure, and a visibility. The results show that the wind speed has the largest correlation coefficient with the TMI SST error. However, the air temperature is the most important factor to the OSTIA SST error. Meanwhile, the relative humidity shows the high correlation with the SST error for the OSTIA product.