6 -- SEASONAL WARMING AND COOLING OF SEA SURFACE

Again, sea surface temperature is inferred from the amount of infrared energy leaving the sea surface. The effect of the atmosphere is to attenuate this signal and to add other sources of infrared energy to the surface signal arriving at the satellite. These atmospheric effects must either be removed or corrected in order to accurately determine the surface temperature from satellite measurements.

There are two steps to removing the influence of the atmosphere.

• Detect and eliminate pixels containing clouds.
• Once the cloud-free pixels are identified, the remaining pixels are corrected for the residual influences of water vapor and aerosols.