The Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) satellite sensors onboard the NOAA POES (Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellites) satellite constellation have been collecting sea surface temperature (SST) measurements since 1981. This dataset combines the NOAA/NASA AVHRR Pathfinder v4.1 dataset (January 1985 - January 2003) and the AVHRR Global Area Coverage (GAC) dataset (January 2003 - present) to provide a long time series of SST. These datasets are reduced-resolution legacy datasets and will be discontinued by NOAA in 2016. The dataset is composed of SST measurements from descending passes (nighttime). 3-day composites are only available for GAC, from 2003 - 2016.
dates available: 1985-2016 (GAC: 2016 only)
spatial resolution: 0.1° (~8 km)
data archive: https://oceanwatch.pifsc.noaa.gov/doc.html#sst
caution: This product discontinued by NOAA in 2016. Use GOES-POES for current SST.