Ocean surface

NOAA SST Quality Monitor (SQUAM) System

 

Ocean surface
Ocean surface

Presentation from Prasanjit Dash, from NOAA NESDIS.

Last Updated

30 May 2022

Published on

24 January 2016

NOAA has been producing global Sea Surface Temperature (SST) products from AVHRR onboard NOAA polar satellites since the early 1980s. In the mid-2000s, the NOAA SST system underwent a major redesign, and the new Advanced Clear-Sky Processor for Oceans (ACSPO) was developed.

The ACSPO is an 'enterprise' NOAA system, capable of making SST retrievals from multiple infrared sensors onboard US polar and geostationary platforms, both operationally and retrospectively.

Currently, a number of ACSPO SST products (Level 2 and Level 3, operational, experimental, and reprocessed) are produced from NOAA and Metop AVHRRs, S-NPP VIIRS, Himawari-8 AHI, and Terra and Aqua MODIS.

The need for unified monitoring and cal/val of various ACSPO products was quickly realised, and the NOAA SST Quality Monitor (SQUAM) system was established in 2007. All SQUAM diagnostics are performed in near-real time (with 2–3 days of latency) and made available online on the SQUAM website.

The presentation gives an overview of SQUAM; the challenges involved in monitoring, calibration and validation, and a view of future uses.

Further details on Prasanjit Dash