The PO.DAAC would like to announce that Ken Casey and NOAA are providing a test version of Pathfinder Version 5.2 for review. Links to these data as well as the complete Pathfinder dataset are available on the PO.DAAC Pathfinder page:

http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/SeaSurfaceTemperature/AVHRR-Pathfinder

The official NOAA announcement may be found below:

The GHRSST Long Term Stewardship and Reanalysis Facility at the NOAA National Oceanographic Data Center announces a public review period for the AVHRR Pathfinder Version 5.2 (PFV52) sea surface temperature product. PFV52 was computed using an entirely modernized system, based on SeaDAS and incorporating several key changes as we prepare for the future Version 6 (PFV6) data set (no release has yet been established for PFV6). These changes include the use of an entirely new land mask, a modified grid, and the inclusion of sea ice and wind speed ancillary data to support the use of the SST data. Importantly, the new PFV52 data are provided in netCDF-4 (classic model, with internal compression and chunking) and are nearly 100% compliant with the GHRSST Data Specification Version 2.0 (http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/pathfinder/PFV52_PublicReview/GDS_TechSpecs_v2.0.pdf) for L3C products.
These data deviate from that standard only in that the sses_bias, sses_standard_deviation, and sst_dtime variables are empty and the aerosol_dynamic_indicator variable is not yet present.

We have made a collection of data spanning 2005-2010 (some days are presently missing) available for download via the services below:

HTTP: http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/pathfinder/PFV52_PublicReview
FTP: ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/pathfinder/PFV52_PublicReview
THREDDS: http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/thredds/catalog/pathfinder/PFV52_PublicReview

We ask you to review and examine these data, then send questions, comments, or concerns to Kenneth.Casey@noaa.gov by 11:59 PM EST on Monday, 23 May 2011. We will address as many problems identified through this public review as we can, prior to production of the full PFV52 data set. We expect to release the full PFV52 data set prior to the 12th GHRSST Science Team meeting, which is being held 27 June to 1 July 2011 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Thank-you for helping us create the best possible AVHRR-based climate data record for SST!


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