Publication Date:
2022-05-26
Description:
© The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Terrestrial, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences 28 (2017): 517-524, doi:10.3319/TAO.2017.03.30.01.
Description:
Fine scale temperature structures, which are commonly found in the top few meters of shallow water columns, may result in deviations of the remotely sensed night-time sea surface temperatures (SST) by the MODIS-Aqua sensor (SSTsat) from the bulk sea surface temperatures (SSTbulk) that they purport to represent. The discrepancies between SSTsat and SSTbulk recorded by temperature loggers at eight stations with bottom depths of 2 - 20 m around the Dongsha Atoll (DSA) between June 2013 and May 2015 were examined. The SSTsat had an average cool bias error of -0.43 ± 0.59°C. The bias error was larger in the warmer (〉 26°C) waters which were presumably more strongly stratified. The root mean square error (RMSE) between SSTsat and SSTbulk, ±0.73°C, was 25% larger than that reported in the open northern South China Sea. An operational calibration algorithm was developed to increase the accuracy in the estimation of SSTbulk from SSTsat. In addition to removing the cool bias error, this algorithm also reduced the RMSE to virtually the same level as that found in the open northern South China Sea. With the application of the algorithm, in June 2015, the average SST in the lagoon of the DSA was raised by about 0.5°C to 31.1 ± 0.4°C, and the area of lagoon with SSTbulk above 31°C, the median value of the physiological temperature threshold of reef organisms, was increased by 69% to about three quarters of the lagoon.
Description:
This work was supported in part by the Key Research and Development Program of Shandong Province (grant no. 2015GSF117017) and Ocean University of China (grant no. 201513037 and 201512011) to Pan, and the Academia Sinica through grant titled “Ocean Acidification: Comparative biogeochemistry in shallow-water tropical coral reef ecosystems in a naturally acidic marine environment” to Wong.
Keywords:
Sea surface temperature
;
Validation
;
Remote sensing
;
Dongsha Atoll
;
Shallow waters
;
Calibration
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
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