NOAA Smith and Reynolds Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST) Level 4 Monthly Version 5 Dataset in netCDF

The Smith & Reynolds Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST) Level 4 dataset provides a historical reconstruction of monthly global ocean surface temperatures and temperature anomalies over a 2 degree spatial grid since 1854 from in-situ observations based on a consistent statistical methodology that accounts for uneven sampling distributions over time and related observational biases. Version 5 of this dataset implements release 3.0 of ICOADS (International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set) and is supplemented by monthly GTS (Global Telecommunications Ship and buoy) system data. As for the prior ERSST version, v5 implements Empirical Orthogonal Teleconnection analysis (EOT) but with an improved tuning method for sparsely sampled regions and periods. ERSST anomalies are computed with respect to a 1971-2000 monthly climatology. The version 5 has been improved from previous version 4. Major improvements in v5 include: 1) Inclusion and use of new sources and new versions of input datasets, such as data from Argo floats (new source), ICOADS R3.0 (from R2.5), HadISST2 (from HadISST1) sea ice concentration, and 2) Improved methodologies, such as inclusion of additional statistical modes, less spatial-temporal smoothing, better quality control method, and bias correction with baseline to modern buoy observations. The new version improves the spatial structures and magnitudes of El Nino and La Nina events. The ERSST v5 in netCDF format contains extended reconstructed sea surface temperature, SST anomaly, and associated estimated SST error standard deviation fields, in compliance with CF1.6 standard metadata.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Maintainer Earthdata Forum
Last Updated June 22, 2026, 18:34 (UTC)
Created April 1, 2025, 18:03 (UTC)
accessLevel public
bureauCode {026:00}
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id 8afc0861-113f-4a37-81c0-4338ba280213
harvest_source_id b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title Science Discovery Engine
identifier 10.5067/ERSST-L4N50
license https://www.usa.gov/government-works
modified 2026-06-15T22:15:59Z
programCode {026:000}
publisher DOC/NOAA/NESDIS/NCEI;NASA/JPL/PODAAC
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash 519122b207980d11da7d5435523858f1801165e7fdb851c917b997dab67a5b90
source_schema_version 1.1
spatial ["CARTESIAN", [{"NorthBoundingCoordinate": 90.0, "WestBoundingCoordinate": -180.0, "EastBoundingCoordinate": 180.0, "SouthBoundingCoordinate": -90.0}]]
theme {"Earth Science"}