Validation of satellite-based sea surface temperature products against in situ observations off the western coast of Sumatra

Abstract

This study validated the sea surface temperature (SST) datasets from the Group for High-Resolution SST Multi Product Ensemble (GMPE), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Optimal Interpolation (OI) SST version 2 and 2.1 (OIv2 and OIv2.1), and Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, Phase II (ECCO2) in the area off the western coast of Sumatra against in situ observations. Furthermore, the root mean square differences (RMSDs) of OIv2, OIv2.1, and ECCO2 were investigated with respect to GMPE, whose small RMSD < 0.2 K against in situ observations confirmed its suitability as a reference. Although OIv2 showed a large RMSD (1–1.5 K) with a significant negative bias, OIv2.1 (RMSD < 0.4 K) improved remarkably. In the average SST distributions for December 2017, the differences among the 4 datasets were significant in the areas off the western coast of Sumatra, along the southern coast of Java, and in the Indonesian inland sea. These results were consistent with the ensemble spread distribution obtained with GMPE. The large RMSDs of OIv2 corresponded to high clouds, and it was suggested that the change in the satellites used for SST estimation contributed to the improvement in OIv2.1.