Sea temperatures

Monitoring ocean temperatures is essential to weather forecasting and understanding changes in marine ecosystems. It also constitutes an important contribution towards observing man-made climate change. Our data are of general relevance to marine research, and thus the advancement of our understanding of the ocean.

BSH’s measurement activities are integrated into national and international marine and climate monitoring programmes. Observational temperature data are collected in a variety of ways, namely through:

Station-based measurements (e.g. MARNET),
Ship-borne measurements,
Drifting buoys (Argo), and
Satellite remote sensing.

Quality controlled data are fed into storage and distribution systems. They form the foundation for higher-level products such as geographical temperature distributions, heat content estimates, or spatio-temporal statistics. Our perhaps most prominent product is the weekly North Sea Sea Surface Temperature Analysis, which has been issued continuously for over 50 years. Current and archived analyses of the sea surface temperature field for the North Sea and the Baltic Sea may be accessed here:

Sea surface temperatures