Corrections to OIv2 SST Data For May 2009

I’ve moved to WordPress.  This post can now be found at Corrections to OIv2 SST Data For May 2009

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Preliminary Notes: I’ve been downloading SST data for only a year, so I can’t say if changes are made often to the current month of OI.v2 SST data. But this month the OI.v2 SST data for May 2009 was changed sometime between June 1, 2009 and June 9, 2009. The corrections will mean little to the majority of my visitors, but for those who are doing research with OI.v2 SST data, you need to back and update your data.
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I ran a quick check to see if there was anything in the weekly OI.v2 SST data that could explain the recent jump in the South Atlantic SST anomalies, Figure 1, that I noted in the May 2009 SST Anomaly Update.
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Figure 1 - South Atlantic data on June 1, 2009

While the weekly data, Figure 2, did show higher than normal South Atlantic SST anomalies, (but not the highest on record, which occurred early in 2003) the recent multi-week decline did not agree with the continued rise in the monthly data.
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Figure 2 - Weekly South Atlantic data through June 3, 2009

So off to the monthly data I went. There I discovered that a change, assumedly a correction, had been made to the monthly OI.v2 SST anomaly data for the South Atlantic. And as noted above, the correction had been made sometime between June 1, 2009 and June 9, 2009. Refer to Figure 3. The drop in the May 2009 readings was almost 0.08 deg C, which is significant if you’re researching the South Atlantic.
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Figure 3 - Correction to monthly South Atlantic SST Anomaly Data

I have never seen a correction before in the OI.v2 SST dataset, but, then again, I haven’t looked for one. SST anomalies for Southern Hemisphere datasets appear to have dropped, while the Northern Hemisphere datasets rose. The changes in some of the datasets that I normally present in the monthly update were so small that they were not visible in comparative graphs. These included Global, Indian Ocean, and NINO3.4 SST anomalies. I have not presented them. The others are illustrated in the following without narrative. Some are quite significant.
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Figure 4 - Correction to monthly South Pacific SST Anomaly Data
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Figure 5 - Correction to monthly Southern Ocean SST Anomaly Data
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Figure 6 - Correction to monthly Southern Hemisphere SST Anomaly Data
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Figure 7 - Correction to monthly Northern Hemisphere SST Anomaly Data
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Figure 8 - Correction to monthly North Atlantic SST Anomaly Data
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Figure 9 - Correction to monthly North Pacific SST Anomaly Data

SOURCE

OI.v2 SST Anomaly Data is available through the NOAA NOMADS System:
http://nomad3.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh?lite