GHRSST

Mission Specification

The Group for High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature (GHRSST) was established to foster an international focus and coordination for the development of a new generation of global, multi-sensor, high-resolution near real time SST products. It brings together international space agencies, research institutes, universities, and government agencies to collectively address the scientific, logistical and managerial challenges posed by creating the SST data products and services within the Project.  
The overall aim of the GHRSST is to provide the best quality sea surface temperature data for applications in short, medium and decadal/climate time scales in the most cost effective and efficient manner through international collaboration and scientific innovation.
Formerly known as the The Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (GODAE) High Resolution SST Pilot Project (GHRSST-PP), it was initially founded in 2002 as an international collaboration for ocean forecasting activities  to address an emerging need for accurate high resolution sea surface temperature (SST) products. Today the GHRSST is a truly international project with over $18 Million US invested across all of the project activities that deliver SST data products from a number of different satellite sensors. It orchestrates a wide variety of GHRSST data streams input and output data that must be shared, indexed, processed, quality controlled, analyzed and documented within an international framework called the Regional/Global Task Sharing (R/GTS) framework.
Large volumes of data and data services must be harnessed together to deliver the new generation of global coverage high resolution SST data sets that meet the GHRSST User Requirements. A basic 'version-1.0' of the R/GTS framework has been implemented in an internationally distributed manner. GHRSST data products Global and regional coverage SST data products are now produced by GHRSST RDAC Regional Data Assembly Centers (RDACs) in Australia, Japan, USA and Europe. RDAC SST Products are passed in near real time to the operational GHRSST GDAC Global Data Assembly Center (GDAC)  at the NASA JPL PO.DAAC where the are integrated together and served to the global application community.  The GDAC plays an essential role in GHRSST quality control and data and metadata management. Over 30 GB of data are exchanged within the international project each day!

Research and development within GHRSST projects continue to tackle the problems of diurnal variability, skin temperature deviations and GHRSST validation/verification validation/verification of GHRSST products. GHRSST data management teams continue to refine the GHRSST data management structures to provide a functional system that conforms to international and federal directives (e.g., ISO, FGDC, INSPIRE). The Long Term Stewardship and Reanalysis Facility (LTSRF) operates routinely at the NOAA National Oceanographic Data Center, ingesting and archiving all GHRSST products on a daily basis in collaboration with the GDAC. The GHRSST International Project Office, jointly funded by the European Space Agency and Met Office, UK, continues to manage the international co-ordination of the project.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

There are so many GHRSST data sets, how do I decide which one to use?

Users should ask themselves some basic questions:

  • What spatial and temporal resolutions do I need?
  • Do I need a skin or foundation (bulk) temperature?
  • Do I need regularly gridded data with no data gaps?
  • What temporal range do I need?
  • Do I need near real time data?
  • Do I need level 2 ungridded data that contains ancillary data fields as well as complete error characteristics for each pixel?
All Level 2P should be considered either as skin (infrared) or subskin (microwave).  Level 4 products have the word : “foundation”, “blended”, “skin”, etc. embedded in the filename, indicating what type of measurement they are.