Products and Services: Time Series Marine and Atmospheric Research Remote Sensing Facility

Sea-surface Temperature Time Series Datapoints

We can produce text files that contain temperature values at chosen points in the ocean over a period of time.

• Data is produced as a table of numeric values in an ordinary text file
• Data is available from 1989 onwards (although earlier data has limitations in terms of the areas covered, and the specifics of the data)
• Choose from 1, 3, 6, 10, 15 or 20 day average temperatures
• Any number of individual geographical points can be included on the same data file.
• Select any period of time desired (ie any number of weeks, months, years in the time series)
• Cost of this service is:
  • $100 per geographical point for 1 or 2 points
  • $50 per geographical point for each point after the first two.

Background

Relative strengths of SST Images, compared to SST Time Series Datapoints..

SST Images give a highly visual method of representing broad structure in the Sea Surface Temperature. It can be very easy to identify eddies, upwellings and other effects by sight.

SST Time Series Datapoints are more appropriate for statistical or scientific analysis. It can be used for tracking seasonal variation, trends, average temperatures and so on.

Limitations

Like all Satellite SST data, readings made too close to land can be corrupted by the ambient land temperature. Typically, land will raise the SST values during summer and lower them during winter. A good rule of thumb is to only use SST values for points further than two 'pixels' away from the nearest land. The size of a 'pixel' changes depending on the source of the data, and the processing that has been done on it. Our Time Series data points generally have a pixel size of between 3 and 4 kilometers. Contact us for more information.

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