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Journal for accession number: 0051834
Created on:                    2009-03-10 21:08:38 UTC
By:                            Sheri Phillips,OC1,SSMC3 4700,7133280 x127

Source:  The 4 km Pathfinder effort at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) and the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and AtmosphericScience (RSMAS) is an extension of, and improvement on, the sea surface
temperature (SST) fields from the NOAA/NASA AVHRR Oceans 9km Pathfinder dataset. In this 4 km Pathfinder project, some important shortcomings in the original 9 km data have been corrected, and the entire time serieshas been reprocessed at the 4 km Global Area Coverage (GAC) level, the
highest resolution possible globally. Twice-daily SST and related parameters from 1985-2001 have been produced, as well as temporal averages for 5-day, 7-day, 8-day, monthly, and yearly periods. Low-resolution .JPEG browse images are available for each dataset. These data products and accompanying Federal Geophysical Data Committee (FGDC) metadata records were produced and archived for distribution at the NOAA National Oceanographic Data Center in 2004.  

The collection was updated in 2008 to include data for 2002-2006, and again in 2009 to include data for September 1981-January 1985. Filenames containing data from this early period were renamed to contain the string "pfv51" (shorthand for "Pathfinder Version 5.1") in place of "pfqd" (shorthand for "Pathfinder Quarter Degree") to remain consistent with the rest of the Pathfinder collection.