Sea surface temperature monitoring supports ocean weather, climate records, fisheries, coral bleaching alerts, marine heatwave analysis, and thermal-front mapping.^[1]^[2]^[3]

Thermal infrared radiometry from instruments such as MODIS and VIIRS is a primary high-resolution route for sea-surface skin and subskin temperature, but it requires clear-sky retrieval.^[1]^[3]

Operational SST products such as NOAA OISST blend satellite, ship, buoy, and Argo observations into regular global grids for climate and monitoring use.^[2]

Microwave SST has coarser spatial resolution but provides useful cloud-penetrating coverage that complements infrared retrievals.^[2]^[3]

What's available today

2 data products and 38 sensors. Start with the most-used; switch to Filter for the full catalogue.

2 Data products

0 Services

38 Sensors

2 open

Data products

Open Copernicus Marine ARMOR3D Temperature Salinity Height Geostrophic Current and MLD

Open Landsat Collection 2 Surface Temperature

Advanced Baseline Imager GOES-16

Advanced Himawari Imager Himawari-9

Advanced Microwave Radiometer - Climate Quality Sentinel-6B

Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) GCOM-W1 (Shizuku)

Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 3 (AMSR3) GOSAT-GW (IBUKI GW)

Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) Aqua

AEISS-A KOMPSAT-3A

ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) Terra

CBERS-4 Infrared Multispectral Scanner 2 CBERS-4

China Ocean Colour and Temperature Scanner HY-1D

ECOSTRESS (ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station) ECOSTRESS ISS deployment

Flexible Combined Imager (FCI) Meteosat-12

FY-4A Advanced Geostationary Radiation Imager FY-4A

FY-4B Advanced Geostationary Radiation Imager FY-4B

GPM Microwave Imager GPM Core Observatory

High Resolution Microwave Radiometer Sentinel-6B

HY-2B Microwave Radiometer Imager HY-2B

HY-2C Calibration Microwave Radiometer HY-2C

HY-2D Calibration Microwave Radiometer HY-2D

Infrared Multispectral Scanner - 2 Huan Jing-2A

INSAT-3DR Imager INSAT-3DR

INSAT-3DS Imager INSAT-3DS

METimage meteorological imager Metop-SG-A1

Microwave Radiometer (MWR) Sentinel-3B

MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) Terra

MSU-GS Electro-L Imager Electro-L N4

MSU-MR VIS/IR Imaging Radiometer Meteor-M N2-4

MTVZA-GY Imaging/Sounding Microwave Radiometer Meteor-M N2-4

Sea Surface Temperature Monitor Oceansat-3

Second Generation Global Imager (SGLI) GCOM-C (Shikisai)

SLSTR (Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer) Sentinel-3A

Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager Meteosat-10

SSMIS —

SWOT Microwave Radiometer Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT)

TIRS (Landsat 8 Thermal Infrared Sensor) Landsat 8

VectorSurv Vectorborne Disease Surveillance System —

Verde —

WSF-M Microwave Imager (MWI) WSF-M1

Sources

[1]NASA PO.DAAC MODIS Terra GHRSST Level 2P sea surface temperature datasetagency doc2026-05-27
[2]NOAA Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature productagency doc2026-05-27
[3]NOAA ACSPO sea surface temperature archiveagency doc2026-05-27

How to cite this page

Plain text

Sea surface temperature. EO-Atlas, SpectraWorks B.V., last reviewed 2026-05-27. https://eo-atlas.org/topics/sea-surface-temperature (CC BY 4.0)

BibTeX

@misc{eoatlas:topics:sea-surface-temperature,
  title = {Sea surface temperature},
  author = {{EO-Atlas}},
  publisher = {SpectraWorks B.V.},
  year = {2026},
  note = {Last reviewed 2026-05-27. CC BY 4.0},
  url = {https://eo-atlas.org/topics/sea-surface-temperature}
}