The monthly global 28 3 28 Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST) has been revised and updated from version 4 to version 5. This update incorporates a new release of ICOADS release 3.0 (R3.0), a decade of near-surface data from Argo floats, and a new estimate of centennial sea ice from HadISST2. A number of choices in aspects of quality control, bias adjustment, and interpolation have been substantively revised. The resulting ERSST estimates have more realistic spatiotemporal variations, better representation of high-latitude SSTs, and ship SST biases are now calculated relative to more accurate buoy measurements, while the global long-term trend remains about the same. Progressive experiments have been undertaken to highlight the effects of each change in data source and analysis technique upon the final product. The reconstructed SST is systematically decreased by 0.0778C, as the reference data source is switched from ship SST in ERSSTv4 to modern buoy SST in ERSSTv5. Furthermore, high-latitude SSTs are decreased by 0.18-0.28C by using sea ice concentration from HadISST2 over HadISST1. Changes arising from remaining innovations are mostly important at small space and time scales, primarily having an impact where and when input observations are sparse. Cross validations and verifications with independent modern observations show that the updates incorporated in ERSSTv5 have improved the representation of spatial variability over the global oceans, the magnitude of El Niño and La Niña events, and the decadal nature of SST changes over 1930s-40s when observation instruments changed rapidly. Both long-(1900Both long-( -2015 and short-term (2000-15) SST trends in ERSSTv5 remain significant as in ERSSTv4.

The monthly Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST) dataset, available on global 28 3 28 grids, has been revised herein to version 4 (v4) from v3b. Major revisions include updated and substantially more complete input data from the International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) release 2.5; revised empirical orthogonal teleconnections (EOTs) and EOT acceptance criterion; updated sea surface temperature (SST) quality control procedures; revised SST anomaly (SSTA) evaluation methods; updated bias adjustments of ship SSTs using the Hadley Centre Nighttime Marine Air Temperature dataset version 2 (HadNMAT2); and buoy SST bias adjustment not previously made in v3b.Tests show that the impacts of the revisions to ship SST bias adjustment in ERSST.v4 are dominant among all revisions and updates. The effect is to make SST 0.18-0.28C cooler north of 308S but 0.18-0.28C warmer south of 308S in ERSST.v4 than in ERSST.v3b before 1940. In comparison with the Met Office SST product [the Hadley Centre Sea Surface Temperature dataset, version 3 (HadSST3)], the ship SST bias adjustment in ERSST.v4 is 0.18-0.28C cooler in the tropics but 0.18-0.28C warmer in the midlatitude oceans both before 1940 and from 1945 to 1970. Comparisons highlight differences in long-term SST trends and SSTA variations at decadal time scales among ERSST.v4, ERSST.v3b, HadSST3, and Centennial Observation-Based Estimates of SST version 2 (COBE-SST2), which is largely associated with the difference of bias adjustments in these SST products. The tests also show that, when compared with v3b, SSTAs in ERSST.v4 can substantially better represent the El Niño/La Niña behavior when observations are sparse before 1940. Comparisons indicate that SSTs in ERSST.v4 are as close to satellite-based observations as other similar SST analyses.

NOAA/NESDIS/NCEI Daily Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (SST) version 2.0 (DOISST v2.0) is a blend of in situ ship and buoy SSTs with satellite SSTs derived from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR). DOISST v2.0 exhibited a cold bias in the Indian Ocean, South Pacific, and South Atlantic due to a lack of ingested drifting-buoy SSTs in the system, which resulted from a gradual data format change from the Traditional Alphanumeric Codes (TAC) to the Binary Universal Form for the Representation of meteorological data (BUFR). The cold bias against Argo was about -0.14°C on global average and -0.28°C in the Indian Ocean from January 2016 to August 2019.We explored the reasons for these cold biases through six progressive experiments. These experiments showed that the cold biases can be effectively reduced by adjusting ship SSTs with available buoy SSTs, using the latest available ICOADS R3.0.2 derived from merging BUFR and TAC, as well as by including Argo observations above 5 m depth. The impact of using satellite MetOp-B instead of NOAA-19 was notable on high-latitude oceans but small on global average, since their biases are adjusted using in situ SSTs. In addition, the warm SSTs in the Arctic were improved by applying freezing-point instead of regressed ice-SST proxy.This paper describes an upgraded version, DOISST v2.1, which addresses biases in v2.0. Overall, by updating v2.0 to v2.1, the biases are reduced to -0.07°C (-0.04°C) and -0.14°C (-0.08°C) in the global and Indian Ocean, respectively, when compared against independent (dependent) Argo observations. The difference against the Group for High Resolution SST (GHRSST) multi-product ensemble (GMPE) product is reduced from -0.09°C to -0.01°C in the global oceans and from -0.20°C to -0.04°C in the Indian Ocean.

Abstract. This paper describes a blended sea-surface temperature (SST) data set that is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Data Record (CDR) program product suite. Using optimum interpolation (OI), in situ and satellite observations are combined on a daily and 0.25 • spatial grid to form an SST analysis, i.e., a spatially complete field. A large-scale bias adjustment of the input infrared SSTs is made using buoy and ship observations as a reference. This is particularly important for the time periods when volcanic aerosols from the El Chichón and Mt. Pinatubo eruptions are widespread globally. The main source of SSTs is the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), available from late 1981 to the present, which is also the temporal span of this CDR. The input and processing choices made to ensure a consistent data set that meets the CDR requirements are summarized. A brief history and an explanation of the forward production schedule for the preliminary and science-quality final product are also provided. The data set is produced and archived at the newly formed National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) in Network Common Data Form (netCDF) at doi:10.7289/V5SQ8XB5.

Described herein is the parametric and structural uncertainty quantification for the monthly Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST) version 4 (v4). A Monte Carlo ensemble approach was adopted to characterize parametric uncertainty, because initial experiments indicate the existence of significant nonlinear interactions. Globally, the resulting ensemble exhibits a wider uncertainty range before 1900, as well as an uncertainty maximum around World War II. Changes at smaller spatial scales in many regions, or for important features such as Niño-3.4 variability, are found to be dominated by particular parameter choices.Substantial differences in parametric uncertainty estimates are found between ERSST.v4 and the independently derived Hadley Centre SST version 3 (HadSST3) product. The largest uncertainties are over the mid and high latitudes in ERSST.v4 but in the tropics in HadSST3. Overall, in comparison with HadSST3, ERSST.v4 has larger parametric uncertainties at smaller spatial and shorter time scales and smaller parametric uncertainties at longer time scales, which likely reflects the different sources of uncertainty quantified in the respective parametric analyses. ERSST.v4 exhibits a stronger globally averaged warming trend than HadSST3 during the period of 1910-2012, but with a smaller parametric uncertainty. These global-mean trend estimates and their uncertainties marginally overlap.Several additional SST datasets are used to infer the structural uncertainty inherent in SST estimates. For the global mean, the structural uncertainty, estimated as the spread between available SST products, is more often than not larger than the parametric uncertainty in ERSST.v4. Neither parametric nor structural uncertainties call into question that on the global-mean level and centennial time scale, SSTs have warmed notably.