Adjusting for desert-dust-related biases in a climate data record of sea surface temperature

Merchant, C. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4687-9850 and Embury, O. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1661-7828 (2020) Adjusting for desert-dust-related biases in a climate data record of sea surface temperature. Remote Sensing, 12 (16). 2554. ISSN 2072-4292 doi: 10.3390/rs12162554

Abstract/Summary

Atmospheric desert-dust aerosol, primarily from north Africa, causes negative biases in remotely sensed climate data records of sea surface temperature (SST). Here, large-scale bias adjustments are deduced and applied to the v2 climate data record of SST from the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative (CCI). Unlike SST from infrared sensors, SST measured in situ is not prone to desert-dust bias. An in-situ-based SST analysis is combined with column dust mass from the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 to deduce a monthly, large-scale adjustment to CCI analysis SSTs. Having reduced the dust-related biases, a further correction for some periods of anomalous satellite calibration is also derived. The corrections will increase the usability of the v2 CCI SST record for oceanographic and climate applications, such as understanding the role of Arabian Sea SSTs in the Indian monsoon. The corrections will also pave the way for a v3 climate data record with improved error characteristics with respect to atmospheric dust aerosol.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/92248
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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