Evaluation of Sea Surface Temperature From the HY-2 Scanning Microwave Radiometer

Haiyang-2 (HY-2) is the first marine dynamic environmental satellite of China, which was launched on August 16, 2011. The scanning microwave radiometer (RM) onboard HY-2 has low-frequency channels with the capability of observing sea surface temperature (SST) from space. In this paper, the Level 2A (L2A) SST products of HY-2 RM are evaluated. The global HY-2 RM L2A SST products are compared with the buoy SST measurements, WindSat SST, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Optimum Interpolation (OI) weekly SST products for the period from January 2012 to December 2014. The collocations of HY-2 RM, WindSat, and buoy SST data are generated with the spatial window of 0.25° and the temporal window of 0.5 h. The biases are -0.45 °C (RM minus buoy) and -0.41 °C (RM minus WindSat) and the corresponding standard deviations are 1.73 °C and 1.72 °C. The comparisons of the weekly averaged HY-2 RM and OI SST show that the biases of each week difference are from -1.06 °C to 0.48 °C with the mean value of -0.30 °C. The standard deviations of the SST difference are from 0.83 °C to 1.47 °C with the mean value of 1.05 °C. The relationships between SST difference and the sea surface and atmospheric parameters, such as wind speed, wind direction, SST, and water vapor are investigated.