Evaluation of Sea Surface Temperatures Derived From the HY-1D Satellite

Global sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are detected by the Chinese ocean color and temperature scanner (COCTS) instruments aboard the HaiYang (HY)-1C and HY-1D satellites. In this study, the SSTs derived from the COCTS instrument on the HY-1D (COCTS/HY-1D) satellite and a nonlinear SST algorithm with corresponding coefficients were introduced. The COCTS/HY-1D SSTs recorded from April 26 to August 31, 2021, were evaluated against water temperature measurements taken at depths above 1 m from the in situ Quality Monitor system; root-mean-square errors (RMSEs) of 0.65 and 0.71 °C and robust standard deviations (RSDs) of 0.51 and 0.47 °C were obtained for the daytime and nighttime SSTs, respectively, using a spatiotemporal matching window of 4 h and 2.5 km. Daily gridded SSTs derived from COCTS/HY-1D were compared with those obtained from the visible infrared imaging radiometer suite (VIIRS) aboard the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) satellite in the same period, and RMSEs of 0.67 ± 0.06 and 0.81 ± 0.06 °C and RSDs of 0.49 ± 0.04 and 0.58 ± 0.05 °C were obtained for the daytime and nighttime SSTs, respectively. The COCTS/HY-1D-derived SSTs covering Gulf Stream waters were cross-validated against the VIIRS/S-NPP data as a case study, and RMSEs of 0.53 and 0.47 °C for the daytime and nighttime, respectively, were obtained.