Long-term validation of AATSR SST data products using shipborne radiometry in the Bay of Biscay and English Channel

Abstract Radiometric measurements of the sea surface temperature (SST) made by the infrared SST autonomous radiometer (ISAR) deployed routinely between 2004 and 2009 from a passenger vessel traversing the English Channel and Bay of Biscay are used to validate satellite SST data products produced using the Advanced along-track scanning radiometer (AATSR) flown on Envisat. More than 1500 independent pairings between an ISAR record and an AATSR pixel, coincident within specified space–time matching windows, are analysed. These confirm good agreement between the in situ and the satellite derived SST estimates, based on the dual view AATSR algorithms, with a bias of less than 0.1 K which is the accuracy limit of the ISAR. The standard deviation of the comparisons depends on the coincidence criteria: for a match-up window of 1 km and 2 h it is around 0.3 K for the three channel (night only) algorithm and 0.4 K for the 2 channel algorithm. Separate validation statistics are produced for the periods before and after 7 Dec 2005 when a change was made to the AATSR algorithms. It is shown that the error distribution was narrowed by introducing the new algorithm and further narrowed by using only the AATSR data that have the highest Confidence Value. This is the first systematic use of autonomous underway shipboard radiometry on a vessel of opportunity for validating satellite data. The methodology is carefully assessed and shown to provide an effective and reliable means of confirming the high quality and stability of the SST data products from AATSR.