Notice to Users of the SST Anomaly and Coral Reef HotSpot Products Users may have noticed a discontinuous jump in the color images of the anomalies and coral reef HotSpot products between the February 20 and February 23 images. This jump was due to the fact that we have switched the source of our SSTs from the NOAA-14 to the NOAA-16 satellite and the NOAA-14 nighttime retrievals had a significant cold bias as described below. From this date (February 27, 2001) forward, the images should now more accurately represent the actual anomalies. NOAA-14 SST RETRIEVALS CONTAIN A COLD BIAS The NOAA-14 nighttime SST retrievals contain a cold bias (up to .8 degrees Celsius) caused by solar contamination during the calibration cycle. Such contamination is possible for much of the nighttime pass of NOAA-14 because the orbit has drifted towards a 5pm equator-crossing time. The contamination is, as expected, mainly on the 3.7-micron channel, but with residual calibration biases due to internal target skin temperature vs PRT physical temperature differences common to all thermal channels. The possibility of mitigating the impact of the calibration error by adopting a split-window formalism for NOAA-14 night-time retrievals is being investigated, as are the prospects for performing a first-order fit to the calibration data either side of the contaminated segment(s) of the orbit. 27 FEB 2001 A. E. Strong