data api · United States

NOAA Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (OISST)

NOAA's Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (OISST) v2.1 Climate Data Records, published as an Icechunk store for anonymous public access. We parse each NOAA daily NetCDF's chunk references with VirtualiZarr and publish those (pancakes) virtually. Monthly statistics are computed data, chunked for timeseries (churro) access. https://github.com/ocean-icechunks/noaa_oisst

Visit source ↗

Claim this listing

Represent NOAA Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (OISST)? Send a claim for review so we can discuss listing updates. Claims do not automatically grant ownership or verification.

Explore paid sponsorship →

What's in it

Data offered docs-verified: daily sea surface temperature (SST) · daily SST anomaly · daily analysis error · daily sea-ice concentration · monthly min/max/mean/std of SST, SST anomaly, analysis error and sea ice
Coverage docs-verified: global · 1981-09-01 to present (about a day or two behind real time)
Resolution docs-verified: 0.25° × 0.25° global grid (720 × 1440); daily temporal resolution
Update frequency docs-verified: about once a day (automated run); NOAA preliminary files replaced by final files about two weeks later
Formats docs-verified: Icechunk · Zarr
Access docs-verified: Free, anonymous public access (no account, no credentials). Licence: Apache-2.0 for the page and viewer configuration; the data is NOAA open data that can be used as desired, with attribution requested.

Useful for

Use cases llm-inferred: Long-term SST and SST anomaly context for coastal or marine baseline sections in environmental assessments (monthly series at a point) · Regional SST climatology as a supporting reference for marine ecology or habitat reports · Historical SST anomaly screening for climate-context statements in water-quality or outfall reports
Audience llm-inferred: marine ecologists · environmental consultants · coastal engineers · climate and hydrology analysts · GIS analysts

Limitations

Constraints docs-verified: Opening the daily group is slow (about 7 s measured) because of its 16,452 one-value time chunks; this is a fixed cost per open · Daily values are read from NOAA's S3 bucket outside the store; icechunk>=2.0 and Python>=3.12 are required · A still-preliminary day can fail to read for about a day until the store's next update · The monthly group is computed from final data only and ends at the last complete final month · Monthly statistics are derived, not an original NOAA product, and were not independently verified · AVHRR-only product on a 0.25° grid, which is coarse for nearshore UK coastal work · US-hosted NOAA dataset with global coverage; no UK-specific product

Licence: see product README
Authentication: Public; anonymous HTTPS/S3 access via data.source.coop
GitHub stars: Unknown
Last commit: Unknown
Last successful page check: 14/10/2026
Page health: page reachable
Package: Not recorded
Verification: Not independently verified

Provenance & evidence

Verified via Source Cooperative API /api/v1/products/ocean-icechunks (public product, updated 2026-09-18).

Metadata observed 14/10/2026 · research sweep: manual-2026-10-15 (source.coop)