NOAA NCEI Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature

The NOAA NCEI (National Center for Environmental Information) Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST) dataset is a global monthly sea surface temperature dataset derived from the International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Dataset (ICOADS). Production of the ERSST is on a 2 degree grid with spatial completeness enhanced using statistical methods. This monthly analysis begins in January 1854 continuing to the present and includes anomalies computed with respect to a 1971-2000 monthly climatology. The newest version of ERSST, version 5, uses new data sets from ICOADS Release 3.0 (Sea Surface Temperatures) SST; SST comes from Argo floats above 5 meters, Hadley Centre sea ice and SST version 2 (HadISST.2) ice concentration. ERSSTv5 has improved SST spatial and temporal variability by

reducing spatial filtering in training the reconstruction functions Empirical Orthogonal Teleconnections (EOTs),
removing high-latitude damping in EOTs,
adding 10 more EOTs in the Arctic.

ERSSTv5 improved absolute SST by switching from using Nighttime Marine Air Temperature (NMAT) as a reference to buoy SST as a reference in correcting ship SST biases. Scientists have further improved ERSSTv5 by using unadjusted First-Guess instead of adjusted First-Guess.