A comprehensive program to validate infrared satellite sea surface temperature measurements

It has become increasingly clear that satellite infrared measurements of sea surface temperature (SST) should be validated against in situ measurements of skin SST. To do so requires the deployment of skin SST radiometers on Volunteer Observing Ships (VOS) and later on moored ocean buoys. The need for these in situ skin SST measurements compliments well plans for reference measurement sites for air-sea heat fluxes. While the heat flux measurements can be made equally well from moored buoys and from VOS ships the skin SST measurements can presently only be carried out from ships where the ship-based radiometer optics can be checked and cleaned regularly. Future radiometer developments may make it possible to reliably deploy a validation radiometer on a moored buoy. These would be located at the buoys deployed for the global heat fluxes. The VOS lines will be chosen to maximize the north-south sampling of the skin SST. The in situ skin SST measurements should be accurate to +/- 0.1 degreesC.