4 km AVHRR Pathfinder Project

***ANNOUNCEMENT 09 September 2011: NODC releases AVHRR Pathfinder Version 5.2***

The NOAA National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) is pleased to release the AVHRR Pathfinder Version 5.2 (PFV52) sea surface temperature data set. This new version of Pathfinder includes substantial updates to the data format, content, and metadata. While previous versions of Pathfinder, including V5.0 and V5.0, were in HDF-SDS format, the new Version 5.2 is in CF-compliant netCDF-4, conforming to the GHRSST Data Specification Version 2 (GDS2.0). See below for more information. To keep abreast of all Pathfinder news, subscribe to the Pathfinder RSS feed.

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The AVHRR Pathfinder Version 5.2 (PFV52) data set was computed using an entirely modernized system, based on SeaDAS and incorporating several key changes over the older Pathfinder V5.0 and V5.1 datasets. PFV52 is viewed as a significant step forward in preparation for the future Version 6 (PFV6) data set (no release has yet been established for PFV6). Changes in PFV52 include the use of an entirely new land mask, a modified grid, and the inclusion of sea ice and wind speed ancillary data to support the use of the SST data. Importantly, the new PFV52 data are provided in netCDF-4 (classic model, with internal compression and chunking) and are nearly 100% compliant with the GHRSST Data Specification Version 2.0 (GDS2.0, http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/pathfinder/Version5.2/GDS_TechSpecs_v2.0.pdf) for L3C products. These data deviate from that standard only in that the sses_bias, sses_standard_deviation, and sst_dtime variables are empty. Data for 1981-2010 are available. All of the PFV52 data are available through NODC's ftp, http, OPeNDAP, and THREDDS access systems:

• HTTP: http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/pathfinder/Version5.2/
• FTP: ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/pathfinder/Version5.2/
• OPeNDAP: http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/opendap/pathfinder/Version5.2/ (Hyrax server needs to be updated to most recent version before it can serve the Pathfinder V5.2 netCDF-4 data)
• THREDDS: http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/thredds/catalog/pathfinder/Version5.2/catalog.html THREDDS supports OPeNDAP, so you can use OPeNDAP through the THREDDS server using this link.
• Browse Images and KML: http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/pathfinder/Version5.2/browse_images

The following table lists known issues with the PFV52 data set:

Acknowledgment & Citation:

If you use Pathfinder 4km data, please acknowledge the use of these data with the following statement: "These data were provided by GHRSST and the US National Oceanographic Data Center. This project was supported in part by a grant from the NOAA Climate Data Record (CDR) Program for satellites".

and cite the following publication:

Casey, K.S., T.B. Brandon, P. Cornillon, and R. Evans (2010). "The Past, Present and Future of the AVHRR Pathfinder SST Program", in Oceanography from Space: Revisited, eds. V. Barale, J.F.R. Gower, and L. Alberotanza, Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-90-481-8681-5_16. (Click here for a PDF copy).

Sample text for a journal article:

In this study, we used AVHRR Pathfinder Version 5.2 (PFV5.2) data, obtained from the US National Oceanographic Data Center and GHRSST (http://pathfinder.nodc.noaa.gov). The PFV5.2 data are an updated version of the Pathfinder Version 5.0 and 5.1 collection described in Casey et al. (2010).

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