Earthdata Forum

Hi.

I downloaded hourly SST data for my period of interest over the Bay of Bengal (Surface Skin Temperature from Merra2)
When I examine these data, in some limited cases, for example the temperature at 9:30 AM is higher than at 12:30 PM. Could this be correct?

Thank you in advance.

It could be, if say there are clouds building to block the shortwave, or cold air outbreak that leads to a drop in the skin temperature.

The thin diurnally sensitive layer in MERRA-2 ocean would react to the atmosphere forcing above. But also, to be precise, if you only want ocean surface data, you should be getting that temperature from the tavg1_2d_ocn_Nx (M2T1NXOCN): Ocean Surface Diagnostics, TSKINWTR quantity. TS in other collections would have data that is mixed land and ocean near coastlines, including small islands as well as the continental coast. OCN is data that is only from the ocean calculations.