Global mapped ocean near-surface satellite data, 8 day means at 4 and 9 km scale, from NASA MODIS Aqua instrument

This is a selection of the MODIS 8 day mean level 3 mapped 8 day mean ocean products at the two highest resolutions available. It spans from July 2002 onwards and will be augmented by newer data from time to time. The source of the data is NASA at the above reference. This data has been reformatted into 3 dimensional, longitude by latitude by time netcdf files for use by researchers in CSIRO. Initially the following products have been selected: chlorophyll, extinction coefficient (K490) and sea surface temperature. The NASA data are also available in various resolutions. The highest two resolution levels have been chosen, with nominal pixel size of 4 and 9 kilometres. A description of the processing carried out by NASA is at http://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/DOCS/modis_processing_overview.pdf