The 3S (Sensor Stability for SST) monitors SST sensors and platforms and complements two other NOAA SST monitoring sub-systems, MICROS and SQUAM.

Monitored in the 3S are calibration gain and offset in SST bands, blackbody view counts (BCs), space view counts (SCs), blackbody temperature, Sun angle with respect to blackbody view, Moon angle with respect to space view (and Moon phase). All analyses are stratified by satellite day and night (i.e., satellite in sunlight, or in Earth shadow). Duration of satellite night, equator-crossing time (EXT), and noise-equivalent delta temperature (NEdT) are also reported.

Global Area Coverage (GAC) data of AVHRR/3’s onboard NOAA-15 to -19, MetOp-A and -B has been analyzed in the 3S from 1998-present. Recently since the release of v2.0, the 3S extended back to 1982 to include data from AVHRR/2's onboard NOAA-7, -9, -11, -12, and -14.

The flow chart of the 3S system is shown. The 3S first re-parses irregularly-sized and overlapping L1b files into regular orbital files, then groups and QCes them, computes orbital statistics, generates time series, and visualizes them on the web as interactive plots.

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