Stability assessment of the (A)ATSR sea surface temperature climate dataset from the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative

Berry, D. I., Corlett, G. K., Embury, O. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1661-7828 and Merchant, C. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4687-9850 (2018) Stability assessment of the (A)ATSR sea surface temperature climate dataset from the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative. Remote Sensing, 10 (1). 126. ISSN 2072-4292 doi: 10.3390/rs10010126

Abstract/Summary

Sea surface temperature is a key component of the climate record, with multiple independent records giving confidence in observed changes. As part of the European Space Agencies (ESA) Climate Change Initiative (CCI) the satellite archives have been reprocessed with the aim of creating a new dataset that is independent of the in situ observations, and stable with no artificial drift (<0.1 K decade−1 globally) or step changes. We present a method to assess the satellite sea surface temperature (SST) record for step changes using the Penalized Maximal t Test (PMT) applied to aggregate time series. We demonstrated the application of the method using data from version EXP1.8 of the ESA SST CCI dataset averaged on a 7 km grid and in situ observations from moored buoys, drifting buoys and Argo floats. The CCI dataset was shown to be stable after ~1994, with minimal divergence (~0.01 K decade−1) between the CCI data and in situ observations. Two steps were identified due to the failure of a gyroscope on the ERS-2 satellite, and subsequent correction mechanisms applied. These had minimal impact on the stability due to having equal magnitudes but opposite signs. The statistical power and false alarm rate of the method were assessed.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/75510
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO) Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	MDPI
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