A Comparison of Sea Surface Temperature Climatologies

Abstract Six global and two regional Pacific monthly sea surface temperature climatologies were compared. The climatologies were based on either surface marine observations or oceanographic cast (surface plus subsurface temperatures) observations. Although the cast data is more accurate than the surface marine, the data density of the cast observations is much more sparse. In this study, the surface marine climatologies were generally found to be superior to the cast climatologies. The individual differences between the climatologies are described and evaluated.