GCOS GOOS WCRP/OOPC IX/3 

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ANNEX IX 

SST AND SEA ICE WORKING GROUP (WG) PROGRESS REPORT 

Richard W. Reynolds 

National Climatic Data Center 

NESDIS, NOAA, Asheville, NC, USA 

The presentation summarized SST progress in several areas. However, this progress is 

no longer coming from the work directed by the WG. It is coming from associated groups 

such as the International Comprehensive Ocean Atmosphere Data Set (I COADS), the 

Workshops on Advances in Marine Climatology (CLIMAR) and the GODAE High 

Resolution SST Pilot Project (GHRSST PP). It was suggested that it may be time to dissolve 

the WG. However, the OOPC stated that the goals of the WG differed from the other groups 

and that the WG should continue. In the sections which follow, SST progress is grouped 

under four topics. The work on sea ice was covered in a companion talk by Nick Rayner, UK 

Met Office.  

1. GODAE High Resolution SST Pilot Project (GHRSST PP)  

Reynolds and Nick Rayner attended the Fourth Workshop in Pasadena, CA, USA, 22 

26 September 2003. Reynolds will attend the next workshop in Townsville, Australia, 26 31 

July 2004. The purpose of the group is to produce global, multi sensor, high resolution SST 

analyses. The Japanese (New Generation SST) project has been producing operational 

GHRSST analyses for ocean regions near Japan since 2002. Beginning in January 2004 a 

European (Medspiration project) GHRSST analysis has been available for the Atlantic and 

Mediterranean Sea. In addition an Australian (blueLINK project) has been funded for the 

ocean regions near Australia and a US (National Oceanic Partnership Program) proposal has 

been funded for global ocean GHRSST analyses. At present no intercomparison of analyses 

and in input data has been done. Furthermore there has been little verification of subjective 

decisions such as those needed to best balance high resolution infrared satellite SSTs with 

lower resolution microwave satellite SSTs. 

2. SST results from the Second Joint Commission for Oceanography and Marine 

Meteorology (JCOMM) Workshop on Advances in Marine Climatology (CLIMAR II), 

Brussels, Belgium on 17 22 November 2003.  

The CLIMAR II presentations on SST often satisfied recommendations from the 

Workshop on Advances in the Use of Historical Marine Climate Data held in Boulder, USA, 

in January   February 2002. One of the most important recommendations was to re examine 

the historic bias corrections to SST, especially for the late 1930s through the end of the 1940s, 

and to include error uncertainties in analyses. Presentations at CLIMAR II showed that bias 

corrections have been done for both the UK HadISST analysis and the NOAA/NCDC 

Extended Reconstruction SST version 2 (ERSST.v2) analyses. Error statistics are included in 

ERSST.v2 and are being added to the next version of HadISST. 

3. Objective Evaluation of an In Situ Observing System for Climate SST 

A method was developed at NOAA/NCDC to evaluate the adequacy of the current in 

situ (ship and buoy) network for climate SST analyses which use in situ and satellite 

observations. Because of the high spatial and temporal coverage of satellite data, in situ data