Sea Surface Temperatures from the GOES-8 Geostationary Satellite

Abstract

The introduction of the 10-bit, five-band, multispectral visible and thermal infrared scanner on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's GOES-8 satellite in 1994 offers an opportunity to estimate sea surface temperatures from a geostationary satellite. The advantage of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) over the traditional Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer is the 30-min interval between images, which can increase the daily quantity of cloud-free ocean observations. Linear regression coefficients are estimated for GOES-8 by using the sea surface temperatures derived from the NOAA-14 polar-orbiting satellite as the dependent variable and the GOES infrared split window channels and the satellite zenith angle as independent variables. The standard error between the polar and geostationary sea surface temperature is 0.35°C. Since the polar satellite sea surface temperature is estimated within 0.5°C relative to drifting buoy near-surface measurements, this implies that the GOES-8 infrared scanner can be used to estimate sea surface temperatures to better than 1.0°C relative to buoys. Daily composites of hourly GOES-8 sea surface temperatures are used to illustrate the capability of the GOES to produce improved cloud-free images of the ocean. Hourly time series reveal a 2°C diurnal surface temperature cycle in the eastern subtropical Pacific with a peak near 1200 LT. The rapid onset of coastal up welling along the southern coast of Mexico during December of 1996 was resolved at hourly intervals.