Intercomparison of long-term sea surface temperature analyses using the GHRSST Multi-Product Ensemble (GMPE) system

• Published in: Remote sensing of environment 2019-03, Vol.222, p.18-33
• Main Authors: Fiedler, Emma K., McLaren, Alison, Banzon, Viva, Brasnett, Bruce, Ishizaki, Shiro, Kennedy, John, Rayner, Nick, Roberts-Jones, Jonah, Corlett, Gary, Merchant, Christopher J., Donlon, Craig
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Analysis; Anomalies; Buoy data; Compare; Data processing; Dataset; Global; Homogeneity; Sea surface temperature; Spatial analysis; SST; Surface temperature; Tropical environments
• ISSN: 0034-4257; 1879-0704
• DOI: 10.1016/j.rse.2018.12.015

Six global, gridded, gap-free, daily sea surface temperature (SST) analyses covering a period of at least 20 years have been intercompared: ESA SST CCI analysis long-term product v1.0, MyOcean OSTIA reanalysis v1.0, CMC 0.2 degree, AVHRR_ONLY Daily 1/4 degree OISST v2.0, HadISST2.1.0.0 and MGDSST. A seventh SST product of the ensemble median of all six has also been produced using the GMPE (Group for High Resolution SST Multi-Product Ensemble) system. Validation against independent near-surface Argo data, a long timeseries of moored buoy data from the tropics and anomalies to the GMPE median have been used to examine the temporal and spatial homogeneity of the analyses. A comparison of the feature resolution of the analyses has also been undertaken. A summary of relative strengths and weaknesses of the SST datasets is presented, intended to help users to make an informed choice of which analysis is most suitable for their proposed application. •A comparison of six long-term sea surface temperature analyses has been undertaken.•A seventh product of the ensemble median of the analyses has been produced.•Product performance, homogeneity and feature resolution have been assessed.•A summary of relative strengths and weaknesses for each dataset is presented.