GHRSST Level 2P North Atlantic Regional Bulk Sea Surface Temperature from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) on the NOAA-17 satellite produced by NEODAAS (GDS version 1)

A Level 2P swath-based Group for High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature (GHRSST) dataset for the North Atlantic area from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) on the NOAA-17 platform (launched on 24 June 2002). This particular dataset is produced by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Earth Observation Data Acquisition and Analysis Service (NEODAAS) in collaboration with the National Centre for Ocean Forecasting (NCOF) in the United Kingdom. The AVHRR is a space-borne scanning sensor on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) family of Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites (POES) having a operational legacy that traces back to the Television Infrared Observation Satellite-N (TIROS-N) launched in 1978. AVHRR instruments measure the radiance of the Earth in 5 (or 6) relatively wide spectral bands. The first two are centered around the red (0.6 micrometer) and near-infrared (0.9 micrometer) regions, the third one is located around 3.5 micrometer, and the last two sample the emitted thermal radiation, around 11 and 12 micrometers, respectively. The legacy 5 band instrument is known as AVHRR/2 while the more recent version, the AVHRR/3 (first carried on the NOAA-15 platform), acquires data in a 6th channel located at 1.6 micrometer. Typically the 11 and 12 micron channels are used to derive sea surface temperature (SST) sometimes in combination with the 3.5 micron channel. The highest ground resolution that can be obtained from the current AVHRR instruments is 1.1 km at nadir. The NOAA platforms are sun synchronous generally viewing the same earth location twice a day or more (latitude dependent) due to the relatively large AVHRR swath of approximately 2400 km. NEODAAS-Dundee acquires approximately 15 AVHRR direct broadcast High Resolution Picture Transmission (HRPT) passes per day over NW Europe and the Arctic. Each pass is approximately 15 minutes duration. These are immediately transferred to NEODAAS-Plymouth where they are processed into sea surface temperature (SST) products and converted to L2P specifications.