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 Terra Level 3 SST Thermal IR Daily 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 Terra satellite. Average daily, weekly (8 day), monthly and annual skin SST products are available at both 4.63 and 9.26 km spatial resolution. Terra was launched by NASA on December 18, 1999, into a sun synchronous, polar orbit with a daylight descending node at 10:30 am, to study the global dynamics of the Earth atmosphere, land and oceans. The 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 observations, derived from the long wave IR 11 and 12 micron wavelength channels, using a modified nonlinear SST algorithm intended to provide continuity with SST derived from heritage and current NASA sensors. At night, a second SST product is produced using the mid-infrared 3.95 and 4.05 micron 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 produced 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) 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 and distributes MODIS ocean L3 SST data from the OBPG as the official Physical Oceanography Data Archive (PO.DAAC) for SST. The R2019 superseded the previous v2014.1 datasets which can be found at https://doi.org/10.5067/MODST-1D9N4

    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 C2036877993-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 Terra Level 3 SST Thermal IR Daily 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/MODST-1D9N9. 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_TERRA_L3_SST_THERMAL_DAILY_9KM_NIGHTTIME_V2019.0.jpg
    Harvest Object Id 6330d612-33ec-40e9-b006-6eebf71b8deb
    Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
    Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
    Homepage URL https://doi.org/10.5067/MODST-1D9N9
    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 Terra Level 3 SST Thermal IR Daily 9km Nighttime
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash 14bc85673d008e54c0044a53bac8cfb9984ce62df0389e79b524e1e9e2de0a9f
    Source Schema Version 1.1
    Spatial
    Temporal 2000-02-24T00:00:00Z/2023-02-28T00:00:00Z

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