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AVHRR Sea Surface Temperatures
June 10, 2008 - This web page will soon no longer be updated in real-time. Sea surface temperature images found here are being served by the Alaska Ocean Observing System, where both real-time and archived historic data are available in .png, .hdf, and geoTIFF formats. Daily, weekly, and monthly composites are also available. Please contact us with any questions or concerns.
Click here to jump directly to archived images.

All time labels are GMT. These images are intended to be for general use. No actual data is accessible from this site, but if you're interested in getting data, please contact Rachel Potter. If the image looks to be just white (i.e. without any color), this is due to cloud cover, which is certainly prevalent in Alaska. You will notice that sometimes the navigation is a little off. This problem is due to the nature of real-time satellite data processing. Please make sure not to mistake patches of very cold temperatures for actual water temps because these could be clouds, ice, dust, etc. Another thing to be aware of is that each area will display the most recent image for that region. The domain/range of the satellite passes do not always include the entire state, so some regions will update with a new pass, while others appear as if they do not.

Check Out Some of Our Historic Images

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Click in the table below to view thumbnails of archived images.

Southeast 2004 2005 2006 2007/2008
Bering Sea 2004 2005 2006 2007/2008
Bristol Bay 2004 2005 2006 2007/2008
Cook Inlet 2004 2005 2006 2007/2008
Northern Gulf 2004 2005 2006 2007/2008
Kodiak Island 2004 2005 2006 2007/2008
Prince William Sound 2004 2005 2006 2007/2008
Yakutat Bay 2004 2005 2006 2007/2008
Southern Alaska 2005 2006 2007/2008
Northern Alaska 2005 2006 2007/2008

Hourly archived images are named by yymmdd.hhmm.n##. If n## was n12, then that stands for NOAA-12, which is one of the current weather satellites which house an AVHRR sensor. (Hint: When viewing the archives, images with larger file sizes are your best bet for a clear day.) Daily images are named by yymmdd.daily. Monthly images are named by yymm.monthly.

AVHRR is an acronym for Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer. This is a sensor housed on the NOAA Polar Operational Environmental Satellites (POES), which orbit the Earth approximately 14 times each day. The images that we have in our database are of one kilometer resolution.

We wish to thank Mike Crowley (SeaSpace) and Kevin Engle (Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska) for help in implementing the processing and displaying of the AVHRR data in real time. This was made possible by funding from NASA Award #NAG13-02042. If you have any questions or comments, please contact Rachel Potter.

 

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Last Modified: June 29, 2005
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