GODAE is sponsored by
4.2 The GODAE High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature Pilot Project (GHRSST)
Lead author: Craig Donlon (Met Office)
Author/co-authors: Craig J. Donlon1, Kenneth S.Casey2, Ian S. Robinson3, Chelle L Gentemann4, Richard W. Reynolds5, Ian Barton6, Olivier Arino7, John Stark1 and Nick Rayner1 Pierre LeBorgne8, David Poulter3, Jorge Vazquez9, Helen Beggs10, David Llewellyn Jones11, Peter Minnett12
1ESA, The Netherlands
2NOAA National Oceanographic Data Center, Silver Spring, USA
3National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, United Kingdom
4Remote Sensing Systems, Santa Rosa, Ca. USA
5NOAA's National Climatic Data Center , Ashville, USA
6CSIRO, Marine Research, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
7European Space Agency, Frascati, Italy
8CMS/Meteo France, Lannion, France
9Jet Propultion Laboratory, Pasedena, USA
10Bureau of Meterology, Melbourne, Australia
11University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
12RSMAS, University of Miami, Miami, USA
Abstract
The Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (GODAE) is an international collaboration for ocean forecasting activities which, in 2002, initiated a GODAE High Resolution SST Pilot Project (GHRSST-PP) to address an emerging need for accurate high resolution sea surface temperature (SST) products. SST is required by operational ocean and atmospheric forecasting systems to constrain the modeled upper ocean circulation thermal structure, for exchange of energy between the ocean and atmosphere and for validation of model output.
Today the GHRSST-PP is a truly international project with over $25 Million US invested across all of the project activities. It orchestrates a wide variety of GHRSST-PP 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 implemented in an internationally distributed manner. Large volumes (currently over 25Gb per day) of data and data services are harnessed together to deliver the new generation of global coverage high resolution SST data sets together with meaningful error estimates for each observation or analysis grid point to meet the GHRSST-PP/GODAE User Requirements.
GHRSST-PP data products and services for global and regional domains are now provided by Regional Data Assembly Centers (RDAC) in Australia, Japan, USA and Europe. RDAC SST products are passed in near real time to GHRSST-PP Global Data Assembly Centres (GDAC) where they are integrated together and served to the global application community. A Long Term Stewardship and Reanalysis Facility (LTSRF) archives all GHRSST-PP data in perpetuity working together with RDAC and GDAC centers. The LTSRF and GDAC play an essential role in quality control and data management of the GHRSST-PP.
Research and development within GHRSST-PP projects continue to tackle the problems of diurnal variability, skin temperature deviation and validation/verification of GHRSST-PP products. GHRSST-PP data management teams continue to refine the data management structures to provide a functional system that conforms to international and federal directives (e.g., ISO, FGDC, INSPIRE). The GHRSST-PP International Project Office, jointly funded by the European Space Agency and Met Office, UK, continues to manage the international co-ordination of the project.
This paper reviews the progress of the GHRSST-PP highlighting key scientific and operational achievements that have been fundamental to the success of the pilot project. The current status of the follow on Global High Resolution SST coordination group are presented which chart the pull through of the pilot project into a sustainable format.
(Last Updated: 13-10-2008)