Principal Investigator (PI): P. Cornillon—PI, University of Rhode Island Co-Investigators (Co-PI): Bob Evans, University of Miami; Ken Casey, National Oceanographic Data Center
The objective of this three year effort is to develop a 28-year (1982-2010) global sea surface temperature (SST) dataset at full Global Area Coverage (GAC) resolution—4km at nadir—and regional SST datasets at full HPRT resolution—1km at nadir. All of these datasets (shown graphically in Figure 1) will be developed from the advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR) data stream and will be made accessible to the community as part of NASA's Group for High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature (GHRSST) program. The regional datasets will cover eastern and western North Pacific waters and western North Atlantic waters. The western North Atlantic regional dataset, waters off the east coast of the US, will cover 1982-2001. The eastern North Pacific dataset will extend from 1992 through 2000 and that for the western North Pacific from 1985 through 1999. The tasks required to accomplish this fall into four groups.
- Generation of error look-up tables (hypercubes) for the AVHRR time series 1982-2010. The GHRSST protocol requires pixel error estimates of retrieved SST values. University of Miami has developed the 'hypercube' approach for Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) SST fields to accomplish this. The same approach will be used for the AVHRR data. Two subtasks are necessary to incorporate this into the AVHRR SST project: - Generate hypercubes to allow error estimates for the AVHRR-derived fields, and - Modify the SeaDAS software to make use of the AVHRR hypercubes.
- Modify the ingestion and navigation portion of SeaDAS to allow ingestion and processing of the three HRPT AVHRR data streams in the URI archive. This task mirrors for the HRPT data, the effort currently underway at University of Miami to incorporate the CLASS AVHRR GAC data into the SeaDAS processing system.
- Process the three major HRPT data streams (western N. Atlantic and eastern and western N. Pacific) from Level 1b (L1b) to L2Pcore and from there to L3Pcore. This task uses hypercubes (Task group 1) together with the ingest routines (Task 2) developed by the University of Miami to process the three data streams in the URI archive.
- Process the GAC AVHRR global dataset for 1982-2010 to L2Pcore and L3Pcore. (Blue line in Figure 1.)
As part of this effort, the PI will coordinate this activity with that of Mike Chin of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who is producing a level 4 SST product.
