Sea Surface Temperature

Select Region for SST Maps

Real Time / Archived Satellite Imagery

• Alabama
• Bahamas
• Mid-Atlantic Bight
• Cape Cod
• Cape Hatteras
• Chesapeake Bay
• East Coast
• EDDIES Project
• Florida Current
• Florida Coast
• Georgia Coast
• Gulf of Mexico
• Gulf Stream
• JCNERRS
• Latte
• Leo-15
• Louisiana
• Maine
• New York Bight
• SHAREM Project
• SW06 Project
• SW06 Zoom

Real Time / Archived Satellite Imagery
Click the rectangles on the map to see images of ocean temperature.

All time stamps are in Grenwich Mean Time (GMT) which is 4 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time from April to October and 5 hours a head the rest of the year (daylight savings time is not observed in England).

In many of the images you will notice large light violet areas. These are either cloudy areas that were not cold enough to be eliminated by the computer, or areas that are outside of the temperature scale. As you see more and more images, you will learn the difference. Finally, these images were auto-navigated using the predicted satellite position, which may be slighty in error, resulting in a shift of the coastline. Errors in the auto-navigation typically occur when the majority of the pass is cloudy or the area is at the edge of the pass swath. In the former situation pixels appear distored due to the extreme angle of which our satellite dish receives the pass. Exact navigation requires human intervention.

A few notes on the Sea Surface Temperature Image Archive

The images in this database are from the AVHRR (advanced very high resolution radiometer).The Rutgers University Coastal Ocean Observation Lab records approximately 9 of these passes per day with their L-Band satellite dish. These images are just a small sample of the area over which they can collect data. The satellite dish on their roof allows them to see as far south as Puerto Rico, as far west as Nevada, and up to 65 degrees N latitude and 40 degrees W longitude. The images on the following pages have been calibrated to show sea surface temperatures. Land temperatures, though slightly innacurate, show the heat emitted from major cities (such as Philly and NYC). Currently Rutgers University track the NOAA-12, 15, 16 and 17 satellites.

The raw satellite data is processed to sea surface temperature using the Multi-channel Sea Surface Temperature (MCSST) algorithm using SeaSpace Terascan software. For more inforation on this algorithm check out the primer written by Dr. Frank Manaldo at Johns Hopkins University. Rutgers University Coastal Ocean Observation Lab's Data is stored in an HDF file format and is plotted using Matlab. The AVHRR sensor has a spectral resolution of 5 channels in the visible and infrared spectrum. The spatial resolution of the data is 1km.

The US coastline (drawn in black) is taken from the NOAA Coastline Extractor database (World Vector Shoreline 1:250,000). Bathymetry (also drawn in black) is obtained from the Smith and Sandwell Bathymetric dataset and units are in feet. Most images have the edge of the continental shelf (600 feet or 100 fathoms or ~200 meters) drawn. Smaller regions have more shallow bathymetric contours.