This is the Monthly Climatology product; data are projected to equidistant Grid that covers the globe at 1x1 degree cell size, resulting in data arrays of 360x180 size. As with the Daily product, there are two sets of Combined data, "Set1" and "Set2". They are different for being produced using a different combination of individual satellite products. Set1/Set2 may contain a larger/smaller global temporal trend in latent heat flux, but with less/more missing data. They are stored together in the monthly HDF-EOS5 files, under two separate Grids, SET1 and SET2. The Monthly Climatology HDF-EOS5 file also contains one extra grid of NCEP Climatology, "NCEP".
The double-quoted labels are the short names of the data fields in the HDF-EOS5 files.
The monthly temporal and one-degree spatial resolution of the product can be used to examining climate variability at these scales. Oceanic evaporation contributes to the net fresh water input to the oceans and drives the upper ocean density structure and consequently the circulation of the oceans.
The previous GSSTF dataset (GSSTF2) has been widely used by scientific communities for global energy and water cycle research and regional and short period data analysis since its official release in 2000/2001. Accurate sea surface fluxes measurements are crucial to understanding the global water and energy cycles. The oceanic evaporation that is a major component of the global oceanic fresh water flux is particularly useful to predicting oceanic circulation and transport. Remote sensing is a valuable tool for global monitoring of these flux measurements. The GSSTF algorithm has been developed and applied to remote sensing research and applications. We are looking forward to serving the scientific communities with another useful dataset in GSSTF2b.
