Improvement of Sea Surface Temperature Data Availability by Merging Method

Abstract

Infrared radiation is commonly used to retrieve the sea surface temperature (SST). However, the infrared radiation cannot penetrate the cloud. Therefore the SST data are only available for cloud free pixels. In this study, we would like to increase the SST availability by using merging method. The AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) image and MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) image were used. The images chosen were spatial and temporal nearly coincident. The images were first preprocessed for masking the cloudy pixels. After that, we merged the SST data of MODIS and AVHRR image. The merging process was done by EASI modeling. Then we calculated the SST availability of each image and merged image. We found that SST data availability had been improved after merging. The SST data availability was improved to 6.62% compared with MODIS image, 4.21%, AVHRR, 6.11%.