Mapset: Sea Surface Temperature wet/dry Season Means in the Northern Marine Region

Set of maps showing mean sea surface temperature in the Northern Marine Region for the wet and dry season. The CSIRO Marine Research Remote Sensing facility automatically receives and archives data from the USA's National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites. Up to 18 passes per day are tracked to receive data. The Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data is received on the High Resolution Picture Transmission (HRPT) signal. Within an hour of reception, these data are automatically processed into full resolution sea surface temperature (SST) images. Raw data originate from the AVHRR sensor on various NOAA polar orbiting satellites, received at various stations around Australia and consolidated ("stitched") by the CSIRO Earth Observation Centre. The stitching removes redundancy and minimises data corruption. Processing from the stitched archive to produce SST is carried out in the CMR Remote Sensing Facility in Hobart using the split window algorithm of McMillin for NOAA9 and NOAA12 satellites and the NLSST (NOAA non-linear SST) algorithm for the other satellites. Cloud-clearing is performed based on the algorithm of Saunders and Kriebel. Each map is made by combining the estimates over the composite period using a time and spatial neighbourhood median filtering method. Each pixel of the images is the 65 percentile of all cloud-cleared SST estimates during the composite period and within a 4x4 km region. The compositing process also removes most residual cloud contamination. These maps have been produced by CSIRO for the National Oceans Office, as part of an ongoing commitment to natural resource planning and management through the 'National Marine Bioregionalisation' project.