Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content
  • Feedback

    • MODIS Aqua Level 3 SST MID-IR Monthly 9km Nighttime V2019.0

    Metadata Updated: December 6, 2023

    Day and night spatially gridded (L3) global NASA skin sea surface temperature (SST) products from the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard the Aqua satellite. Average daily, weekly (8 day), monthly and annual skin SST products at are available at both 4.63 and 9.26 km spatial resolution. Aqua was launched by NASA on May 4, 2002, into a sun synchronous, polar orbit with a daylight ascending node at 13:30, formation flying in the A-train with other Earth Observation Satellites (EOS), to study the global dynamics of the Earth atmosphere, land and oceans. MODIS captures data in 36 spectral bands at a variety of spatial resolutions. Two SST products can be present in these files. The first is a skin SST produced for both day and night (NSST) observations, derived from the long wave IR 11 and 12 micron wavelength channels, using a modified nonlinear SST algorithm intended to provide continuity of SST derived from heritage and current NASA sensors. At night, a second SST product is generated using the mid-infrared 3.95 and 4.05 micron wavelength channels which are unique to MODIS; the SST derived from these measurements is identified as SST4. The SST4 product has lower uncertainty, but due to sun glint can only be used at night. To generate the L3 products the L2 pixels are binned into an integerized sinusoidal area grid (ISEAG) and mapped into an equidistant cylindrical (also known as Platte Carre projection. Additional projection detailed can be found at https://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/format/ The NASA MODIS L3 SST data products are generated by the NASA Ocean Biology Processing Group (OBPG) and Peter Minnett and his team at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS) are responsible for sea surface temperature algorithm development, error statistics and quality flagging. JPL acquires MODIS ocean L3 SST data from the OBPG and is the official Physical Oceanography Data Archive (PO.DAAC) for SST. The R2019.0 supersedes the previous v2014.1 datasets which can be found at https://doi.org/10.5067/MODAM-MO9N4

    Access & Use Information

    Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

    Downloads & Resources

    References

    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2015.04.023
    https://doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-18-0103.1

    Dates

    Metadata Created Date December 1, 2022
    Metadata Updated Date December 6, 2023

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from NASA Data.json

    Other Data Resources

    Graphic Preview

    Thumbnail

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date December 1, 2022
    Metadata Updated Date December 6, 2023
    Publisher NASA/JPL/PODAAC
    Maintainer
    Identifier C2036877865-POCLOUD
    Data First Published 2019-12-14
    Language en-US
    Data Last Modified 2019-12-14
    Category EOS, geospatial
    Public Access Level public
    Bureau Code 026:00
    Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
    Metadata Catalog ID https://data.nasa.gov/data.json
    Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
    Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
    Citation NASA OBPG. 2020-01-15. MODIS Aqua Level 3 SST MID-IR Monthly 9km Nighttime. Version 2019.0. MODIS Terra Global Level 3 Mapped SST. OBPG, Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD,US. Archived by National Aeronautics and Space Administration, U.S. Government, PO.DAAC. https://doi.org/10.5067/MODAM-MO9N9. https://podaac-tools.jpl.nasa.gov/drive/files/allData/modis/L3/docs/modis_sst.html. NASA OBPG, OBPG, 2020-01-15, MODIS Aqua Level 3 SST MID-IR Monthly 9km Nighttime V2019.0, https://podaac-tools.jpl.nasa.gov/drive/files/allData/modis/L3/docs/modis_sst.html.
    Creator NASA OBPG
    Graphic Preview Description Thumbnail
    Graphic Preview File https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/Podaac/thumbnails/MODIS_AQUA_L3_SST_MID-IR_MONTHLY_9KM_NIGHTTIME_V2019.0.jpg
    Harvest Object Id f856b2db-ea00-4642-afac-fd6748a0bd2e
    Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
    Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
    Homepage URL https://doi.org/10.5067/MODAM-MO9N9
    Metadata Type geospatial
    Old Spatial -180.0 -90.0 180.0 90.0
    Program Code 026:001
    Related Documents https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2015.04.023, https://doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-18-0103.1
    Release Place OBPG, Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD,US
    Series Name MODIS Aqua Level 3 SST MID-IR Monthly 9km Nighttime
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash 692fe0074fcee8dd1973e42f14f5a1b3ec42f0a6e2045a66892e83d201736988
    Source Schema Version 1.1
    Spatial
    Temporal 2002-07-01T00:00:00Z/2023-03-01T00:00:00Z

    Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.