********************************************************************** README This readme file is for the Coral Reef Watch operational 50 km (half-degree) satellite-only nighttime SST climatologies used in producing NOAA Coral Reef Watch near-real-time operational 50 km satellite coral bleaching monitoring products. ********************************************************************** Creation of these climaologies: Beginning in mid-1996, more accurate monthly mean SST climatologies derived solely from satellite nighttime SST observations became available at higher spatial resolution, 36 km, than any previous global SST climatologies (at 60-100 km) (Strong et al., 1997). This made it possible to generate more accurate higher resolution near-real-time SST anomaly and coral bleaching HotSpot products from the CRW nighttime SST field. The original 36 km satellite-only reprocessed SST data used for creating the climatologies were generated from the Multi-Channel SSTs (MCSSTs) by the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS) of the University of Miami (Gleeson and Strong, 1995). In-situ SSTs from drifting and moored buoys were used to remove any biases, and statistics were compiled with time to derive the reprocessed SSTs. The monthly mean SST climatologies were then derived by averaging these satellite SSTs during the time period of 1985-1993, with observations from the years 1991 and 1992 omitted due to the aerosol contamination from the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. These climatologies were developed at NOAA/NESDIS/STAR (then ORA) before being delivered to NESDIS/OSDPD for implementation. The 36 km climatologies were finally interpolated into 50 km resolution to match the 50 km resolution of the operational SST analysis field. The Maximum Monthly Mean SST climatology was derived from these 12 monthly mean climatologies by taking the highest monthly mean climatology values for each pixel. References: Gleeson, M. W. and A. E. Strong, 1995. Applying MCSST to coral reef Bleaching. Adv. Space Res., 16(10), 10,151-10,154. Strong, A. E., C. B. Barrientos, C. Duda, and J. Sapper, 1997. Improved satellite techniques for monitoring coral reef bleaching. Proc 8th International Coral Reef Symposium, Panama City, Panama, p 1495-1498. ===================================================================== NOAA Coral Reef Watch April 12, 2007