Remote Sensing of Sea Surface Temperature

A thorough knowledge of the distribution of sea surface temperature over large areas is important in the geophysical and marine sciences. This enables one to understand certain atmospheric and oceanic processes, in the detection and monitoring of ocean currents, upwelling zones and other circulation systems. Unfortunately, a true and complete picture of the sea surface temperature distribution has not been available due to observational difficulties. Sea surface temperature charts that are available now are based on commercial ship reports and on data from research cruises. Comprehensive survey of this feature by means of sensors carried in aircraft, ships or any other similar platforms would be time-consuming and is frequently impractical. An earth satellite in a near-polar orbit can best provide useful information about the sea surface temperature. After the launch of several TIROS and Nimbus satellites containing different radiometers, it has been shown that it is possible to measure the sea surface temperature distributions under relatively clear sky conditions. The observed temperature distributions are very complex and difficult to interpret in the absence of any ground truth information. In the future every effort should be made to obtain sufficient concurrent surface observations in order to successfully compare and interpret the data