3 Annual SST Cycles
Description: Annual SST Cycles
Found in: State of the Ecosystem - Gulf of Maine & Georges Bank (2018), State of the Ecosystem - Mid-Atlantic (2018)
Indicator category: Database pull with analysis
Contributor(s): Sean Hardison, Vincent Saba
Data steward: Kimberly Bastille, kimberly.bastille@noaa.gov
Point of contact: Kimberly Bastille, kimberly.bastille@noaa.gov
Public availability statement: Source data are available here.
3.1 Methods
3.1.1 Data sources
Data for annual sea surface tempature (SST) cycles were derived from the NOAA optimum interpolation sea surface temperature (OISST) high resolution dataset (NOAA OISST V2 dataset) provided by NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory’s Physical Sciences Devision, Boulder, CO. The data extend from 1981 to present, and provide a 0.25° x 0.25° global grid of SST measurements (Reynolds et al. 2007). Gridded SST data were masked according to the extent of Ecological Production Units (EPU) in the Northeast Large Marine Ecosystem (NE-LME) (See “EPU_Extended” shapefiles).
3.1.2 Data extraction
Daily mean sea surface temperature data for 2017 and for each year during the period of 1981-2012 were downloaded from the NOAA OI SST V2 site to derive the long-term climatological mean for the period. The use of a 30-year climatological reference period is a standard procedure for metereological observing (WMO 2017). These reference periods serve as benchmarks for comparing current or recent observations, and for the development of standard anomaly data sets. The reference period of 1982-2012 was chosen to be consistent with previous versions of the State of the Ecosystem report.
R code used in extraction and processing can be found here.
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