Modern Average Global Sea-Surface Temperature

The data contained in this data set are derived from the NOAA
Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer Multichannel Sea
Surface Temperature data (AVHRR MCSST), which are obtainable
from the Distributed Active Archive Center at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. The JPL tapes
contain weekly images of SST from October 1981 through
December 1990 in nine regions of the world ocean: North
Atlantic, Eastern North Atlantic, South Atlantic, Agulhas,
Indian, Southeast Pacific, Southwest Pacific, Northeast
Pacific, and Northwest Pacific.
This data set represents the results of calculations carried
out on the NOAA data and also contains the source code of the
programs that made the calculations. The objective was to
derive the average sea-surface temperature of each month and
week throughout the whole 10-year series, meaning, for
example, that data from January of each year would be averaged
together. The result is 12 monthly and 52 weekly images for
each of the oceanic regions. Averaging the images in this way
tends to reduce the number of grid cells that lack valid data
and to suppress interannual variability.