Date: Tuesday 20 April 2021 at 13:00 (Europe/London)
Speaker: Dr Anne O’Carroll, Remote Sensing Scientist, EUMETSAT, Darmstadt (DE)
Abstract
Sea surface temperature (SST) is a fundamental physical variable for understanding, quantifying and predicting complex interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere. Such processes dictate how heat from the sun is redistributed across the global oceans, directly impacting large- and small-scale weather and climate patterns.
The presentation will address how SST retrieved from satellites are exploited by operational users and address the many different types of satellite observations available ranging from infrared polar-orbiting satellites to microwave and geostationary platforms and how these data are managed, coordinated and processed, including the challenges and future evolutions and developments.
The validation of SST retrievals will be described, and how satellite observations are used together with in situ ocean measurements such as from buoys and ship-borne radiometers, to ensure the quality of the satellite observations to known and verified uncertainties. Pixel-derived uncertainties of SST are necessary for data assimilation and climate modelling applications. The concept of Fiducial Reference Measurements (FRM) to establish and maintain an SI traceable chain for satellite-derived Surface Temperature product validation will also be addressed. The presentation will also describe the application of these data to SST science and show some recent examples of applications from coral heat monitoring to hurricane forecasting.
Biography
Anne G. O’Carroll is a remote sensing scientist for Surface Temperature Radiometry, based at EUMETSAT in Darmstadt, Germany. The focus of their activities are the generation and validation of very high accuracy satellite-derived retrievals of sea (and sea-ice) surface temperature, for operational weather and ocean forecast systems, climate science and climate monitoring, plus a diverse range of research and user applications such as fisheries, tourism, coral heat monitoring, and shipping.
She also chairs the Group for High Resolution Sea-Surface Temperature (GHRSST) who are an open international team of data producers, users and scientists collaborating on the application of satellites for monitoring SST. The provision of observations of global SST data in near-real time for operational systems, climate modelling and the broader scientific community is now a mature and sustained service providing data to the community in a common format together with uncertainty estimates following the Committee of Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) standard of Analysis Ready Data (ARD).
