• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.1-15
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• 2018

Passive microwave sea surface temperatures (SST) were validated in the Northwest Pacific using a total of 102,294 collocated matchup data between Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) / GPM Microwave Sensor(GMI) data and oceanic in-situ temperature measurements from March 2014 to December 2016. A root-mean-square (RMS) error and a bias error of the GMI SST measurements were evaluated to $0.93^{\circ}C$ and $0.05^{\circ}C$, respectively. The SST differences between GMI and in-situ measurements were caused by various factors such as wind speed, columnar atmospheric water vapor, land contamination near coastline or islands. The GMI SSTs were found to be higher than the in-situ temperature measurements at low wind speed (<6 m/s) during the daytime. As the wind speed increased at night, SST errors showed positive bias. In addition, other factors, coming from atmospheric water vapor, sensitivity degradation at a low temperature range, and land contamination, also contributed to the errors. One of remarkable characteristics of the errors was their latitudinal dependence with large errors at high latitudes above $30^{\circ}N$. Seasonal characteristics revealed that the errors were most frequently observed in winter with a significant positive deviation. This implies that SST errors tend to be large under conditions of high wind speeds and low SSTs. Understanding of microwave SST errors in this study is anticipated to compensate less temporal capability of Infrared SSTs and to contribute to increase a satellite observation rate with time, especially in SST composite process.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.273-287
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• 2008

Characteristics of skin-bulk sea surface temperature (SST) differences in the Northeast Asia seas were analyzed by utilizing 845 collocated matchup data between NOAA/AVHRR data and oceanic in-situ temperature measurements for selected months from 1994 to 2003. In order to understand diurnal variation of SST within a few meters of the upper ocean, the matchup database were classified into four categories according to day-night and drifter-shipboard measurements. Temperature measurements from daytime drifters showed a good agreement with satellite MCSST (Multi-Channel Sea Surface Temperature) with an RMS error of about $0.56^{\circ}C$. Poor accuracy of SST with an rrns error of $1.12^{\circ}C$ was found in the case of daytime shipboard CTD (Conductivity, Temperature, Depth) measurements. SST differences between MCSST and in-situ measurements are caused by various errors coming from atmospheric moist effect, coastal effect, and others. Most of the remarkable errors were resulted from the diurnal variation of vertical temperature structure within a few meters as well as in-situ oceanic temperatures at different depth, about 20 cm for a satellite-tracked drifting buoy and a few meters for shipboard CTD or moored buoy. This study suggests that satellite-derived SST shows significant errors of about ${\pm}3^{\circ}C$ in some cases and therefore it should be carefully used for one's purpose on the base of in-depth understanding of skin-bulk SST difference and vertical temperature structure in regional sea.