A comparison of modeled diurnally varying sea surface temperatures to geostationary satellite data

A subset of modeled diurnally varying sea surface temperatures is compared to geostationary satellite sea surface temperature data in order to evaluate how well the model computes the diurnal cycle. By analyzing the satellite coverage of sea surface temperatures, a small set of grid points are selected to compare the evolution of the diurnal cycle to the model data over the course of a day. Overall, the model overestimates the peak of the diurnal cycle as compared to the satellite data, although the pre-dawn and post-sunset temperatures are fairly similar. Since the difference averaged over all hours of the day is small, the model is believed to estimate the total heat content in the upper layers of the ocean correctly, but needs some adjusting to broaden the heating cycle.