DINEOF-based bias correction of SEVIRI sea surface temperature using Metop-A/AVHRR and ENVISAT/AATSR SST

Satellite-derived sea surface temperature (SST) show inter-sensor and inter-regional differences (biases) due to their technical characteristics, multispectral algorithm limitations and the changing physical properties of the measured environments.
The bias correction is usually calculated as a difference between the SST measurements from two sensors where one is defined as the reference (e.g. ENVISAT/AATSR). These empirical bias fields show gaps due to the satellite characteristics (e.g. narrow swath in case of AATSR) and to the presence of clouds or other atmospheric contamination sources.
We present a bias correction approach based on DINEOF (Data Interpolating Empirical Orthogonal Functions) for reconstructing missing data. Two different approaches for deriving SST bias fields were used: analysing SST biases based on reconstructed SST differences or based on differences of the reconstructed SST fields. The method is applied at a large scale (European seas) and at a regional scale (e.g. Mediterranean Sea) to correct SEVIRI and Metop-A/AVHRR SST measurements using ENVISAT/AATSR as a corrector. For SEVIRI we additionally used Metop-A/AVHRR SST as a corrector to analyse the impact of ENVISAT/AATSR failure. Corrected SST fields based on both approaches were validated against independent in situ buoy SST data or with ENVISAT/AATSR SST data for areas without in situ data (e.g. eastern Mediterranean). The method is also compared to the operational bias correction method at Meteo-France/CMS that uses a temporal and spatial averaging.
Results show that both approaches lead to near-zero biases when compared to AATSR SST measurements, although the differences of reconstructions exhibit much higher standard deviation (> 0.6 K) compared to the reconstruction of differences (< 0.5 K). Comparison with in situ data expectedly depends on the initial comparison between AATSR and in situ SST for specific regions.