Intercomparison of High‐Resolution SST Climatologies Over the Australian Region

Abstract

AbstractSea surface temperature (SST) climatology data sets provide the reference for observations of ocean anomalous events, which may have significant effects on the local marine ecosystem. The representativeness of the SST climatologies of the historical and current ocean surface states is essential to identify and predict anomalous events. Here, we compare five high‐resolution SST climatology data sets around the Australian coast to investigate the uncertainty introduced by the reference SSTs to current estimates of SST anomalies. The data sets studied are (a) 0.05° global daily climatology calculated by this study from the ESA SST Climate Change Initiative (CCI) Analysis v2.0 product (1981–2016); (b) 0.25° global daily climatology for 1981–2016 derived from the NCEI daily AVHRR_OI SST; (c) 0.02° SST Atlas of the Australian Regional Seas (SSTAARS), a pixel‐wise daily climatology for 1992–2016; (d) 0.05° NOAA Coral Reef Watch (CRW) global monthly climatology for 1985–2012; and (e) 0.1° global daily climatology for 1994–2016 derived from the BRAN_2016 ocean reanalysis. The climatology data sets formed from SST CCI analysis v2.0 data are used as the reference to compare data sets (b)–(e) based on the same reference time period and central year. This study indicates that climatologies (a) and (e) would be suitable for use as a reference over the Australian region. However, for smaller spatial scales or where a night‐only SST climatology is required, the 2‐km daily SSTAARS would also be suitable. The feature resolution of the climatology data sets (a) and (e) is significantly coarser than SSTAARS climatology.