The NOAA OI.v2 SST monthly fields are derived by a linear interpolation of the weekly optimum interpolation (OI) version 2 fields to daily fields then averaging the daily values over a month. The monthly fields are in the same format and spatial resolution as the weekly fields.
The OI.v2 analysis is described in Reynolds, R.W., N.A. Rayner, T.M.
Smith, D.C. Stokes, and W. Wang, 2002: An Improved In Situ and Satellite
SST Analysis for Climate. J. Climate, 15, 1609-1625.
The ice field shows the approximate monthly average of the ice concentration values input to the SST analysis. Ice concentration is stored as the percentage of are of area covered. For the ice fields, the value 122 represents land or coast. Note, the ice land mask is a function of the ice analysis and may change periodically.
The sst and ice fields are on a 1-degree (360 lon by 180 lat) grid. The first gridbox of each array is centered on 0.5E, 89.5S. The points move eastward to 359.5E, then northward to 89.5N.
The OI analysis is done over all ocean areas and the Great Lakes. There is no analysis over land. The land values are filled by a Cressman interpolation to produce a complete grid for possible interpolation to other grids. The ocean and land areas are defined by a land sea mask. This data set is a binary, direct access file, lstags.ondeg.dat, which is included in the same directory. The spatial grid is defined identically to the grid for the SST arrays.
Please note, a new climatology based on these fields was derived by Yan
Xue of NCEPs Climate Prediction Center following the technique of
Reynolds and Smith (1995) and Smith and Reynolds (1998). The new
climatology is available in:
ftp://ftp.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/wd52yx/sstclim/
For further information, contact:
Diane C. Stokes
email: Diane.Stokes@noaa.gov
Voice: (301) 763-8000 extension 7581
FAX: (301) 763-8125
Postal Address:
Climate Modeling Branch W/NP24
Environmental Modeling Center
National Centers for Environmental Prediction
World Weather Building, Room 807
5200 Auth Road
Camp Springs, MD 20746 USA
UPDATED: 20 December 2001
