NOAA/AVHRR sea surface temperature accuracy in the East/Japan Sea

Sea surface temperature (SST) retrieved from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) onboard National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) polar orbiting environmental satellites were validated in the East/Japan Sea (EJS) using surface drifter measurements as ground truths from 2005 to 2010. Overall, the root-mean-square (rms) errors of multichannel SSTs (MCSSTs) and non-linear SSTs (NLSSTs) using global SST coefficients were approximately 0.85 degrees C and 0.80 degrees C, respectively. An analysis of the SST errors (satellite - drifter) revealed a dependence on the amount of atmospheric moisture. In addition, satellite-derived SSTs tended to be related to wind speeds, particularly during the night. The SST errors also demonstrated diurnal variations with relatively higher rms from 0.80 degrees C to 1.00 degrees C during the night than the day, with a small rms of about 0.50 degrees C. Bias also exhibited reasonable diurnal differences, showing small biases during the daytime. Although a satellite zenith angle has been considered in the global SST coefficients, its effect on the SST errors still remained in case of the EJS. Given the diverse use of SST data, the continuous validation and understanding of the characteristic errors of satellite SSTs should be conducted based on extensive in-situ temperature measurements in the global ocean as well as local seas.