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Description

This product provides a near-real-time (NRT) Level-2 Sea Surface Temperature (SST) (identified by "rt" within the file name) for the Group for High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature (GHRSST) Project, which is derived from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) by Remote Sensing Systems (RSS, or REMSS). AMSR2 was launched on 18 May 2012, onboard the Global Change Observation Mission - Water (GCOM-W) satellite developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The GCOM-W mission aims to establish the global and long-term observation system to collect data, which is needed to understand mechanisms of climate and water cycle variations, and demonstrate its utilization. AMSR2 onboard the first generation of the GCOM-W satellite will continue Aqua/AMSR-E observations of water vapor, cloud liquid water, precipitation, SST, sea surface wind speed, sea ice concentration, snow depth, and soil moisture. AMSR2 is a remote sensing instrument for measuring weak microwave emission from the surface and the atmosphere of the Earth. The antenna of AMSR2 rotates once per 1.5 seconds and obtains data over a 1450 km swath. This conical scan mechanism enables AMSR2 to acquire a set of daytime and nighttime data with more than 99% coverage of the Earth every 2 days. The NRT SST is made as available as soon as possible, generally within 3 hours latency. The v8.2 supersedes the previous v8a dataset which can be found at https://www.doi.org/10.5067/GHAM2-2TR8A.

Product Summary

Platforms
GCOM-W1
Instruments
AMSR2
Spatial Extent

N: 90 S: -90 E: 180 W: -180

Spatial Resolution
25000 Meters x 25000 Meters
Location
GLOBAL
Coordinate System
CARTESIAN
Granule Spatial Representation
CARTESIAN
Temporal Extent
2012-07-02
Data Partner
Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA (NASA/JPL/PODAAC) ,
Remote Sensing Systems (RSS)
Concept ID
C2596986276-POCLOUD
Data State
ACTIVE
Number of Files/Granules
15459
Processing Level
2P
Published
Updated
Science Keywords
Sea Surface Temperature

Citation

Citation is critically important for dataset documentation and discovery. This dataset is openly shared, without restriction, in accordance with the EOSDIS Data Use and Citation Guidance.

Copy Citation

NASA/JPL. (2023). GHRSST Level 2P Global Near-Real-Time Subskin Sea Surface Temperature version 8.2 (v8.2) from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) on the GCOM-W satellite by REMSS [Data set]. NASA Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.5067/GHAM2-2TR82 Date Accessed: 2026-04-13

Documents

Variables

The table below lists the variables contained within a single granule for this dataset. Variables often contain observed or derived geophysical measurements collected from a variety of sources, including remote sensing instruments on satellite and airborne platforms, field campaigns, in situ measurements, and model outputs. The terms variable, parameter, scientific data set, layer, and band have been used across NASA’s Earth science disciplines; however, variable is the designated nomenclature in NASA’s Common Metadata Repository (CMR). Variable metadata attributes such as Name, Description, Units, Data Type, Fill Value, Valid Range, and Scale Factor allow users to efficiently process and analyze the data. The full range of attributes may not be applicable to all variables. Additional information on variable attributes is typically available in the data, user guide, and/or other product documentation.

For questions on a specific variable, please use the Earthdata Forum.

Name Description Units Data Type Fill Value Valid Range Scale Factor Offset
cloud_liquid_water non L2P core field kg m-2 byte -128 -127 to 127 0.01 1.22
cool_skin non L2P core field K byte -128 -127 to 127 0.01 -1
diurnal_amplitude non L2P core field K byte -128 -127 to 127 0.02 1
dt_analysis SST difference from reference SST K byte -128 -127 to 127 0.1 N/A
l2p_flags These flags are important to properly use the data N/A short N/A 0 to 2047 1 N/A
lat Latitude of retrievals degrees_north float -32768 -89.35 to 89.13 1 N/A
lon Longitude of retrievals degrees_east float -32768 -179.99 to 180 1 N/A
quality_level These are the overall quality indicators and are used for all GHRSST SSTs N/A byte -128 0 to 5 1 N/A
rain_rate non L2P core field mm hr-1 byte -128 -127 to 127 0.1 12.7
sea_surface_temperature Microwave SST = approximately the top 1 milimeter K short -32768 -5000 to 5000 0.01 273.15
sses_bias SST bias estimate as a function of SST and wind speed, based on comparisons with buoy SSTs K byte -128 -127 to 127 0.01 N/A
sses_standard_deviation SST standard deviation estimate as a function of SST and wind speed, based on comparisons with buoy SSTs K byte -128 -127 to 127 0.01 0.75
sst_dtime reference time + this sst_dtime = time of observation second short -32768 0 to 10000 1 N/A
time this base time + sst_dtime = time of observation seconds since 1981-01-01 00:00:00 int N/A N/A 1 N/A
water_vapor non L2P core field kg m-2 byte -128 -127 to 127 0.3 38.1
wind_speed wind_speed_lf m s-1 byte -128 -127 to 127 0.2 25.4
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