Remote Sensing, Vol. 12, Pages 720: The Current Configuration of the Ostia System for Operational Production of Foundation Sea Surface Temperature and Ice Concentration Analyses (Remote Sensing)

The Operational Sea Surface Temperature and Sea Ice Analysis (OSTIA) system generatesglobal, daily, gap-filled foundation sea surface temperature (SST) fields from satellite data and in situobservations. The SSTs have uncertainty information provided with them and an ice concentration(IC) analysis is also produced. Additionally, a global, hourly diurnal skin SST product is outputeach day. The system is run in near real time to produce data for use in applications such asnumerical weather prediction. Data production is monitored routinely and outputs are available fromthe Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS; marine.copernicus.eu). As anoperational product, the OSTIA system is continuously under development. For example, since theoriginal descriptor paper was published, the underlying data assimilation scheme that is used togenerate the foundation SST analyses has been updated. Various publications have described thesechanges but a full description is not available in a single place. This technical note focuses on theproduction of the foundation SST and IC analyses by OSTIA and aims to provide a comprehensivedescription of the current system configuration.