After the sun, the ocean is the most important driver of weather and climate on the planet – it transports heat across latitudes and depths, exchanges moisture with the atmosphere, and its climatic cycles affect weather patterns around the world. The ocean is home to 50% of life on Earth, and over half of humans live within 35 miles of its coast. This week, NOAA has taken one step closer to a better understanding of our ocean’s dynamics. Researchers in NOAA Satellite and Information Service have developed and put into operations a daily 5 kilometer resolution sea surface temperature product – the highest resolution, global, cloud-cleared, real-time analysis of the ocean temperature thus far. The 5 km product replaces the 13 km product developed just four years ago. This particular dataset combines measurements from the NOAA GOES and POES, EUMETSAT Meteosat-9 and Metop-A, and JMA MTSAT satellites, and uses an improved series of equations to reduce the noise and improve the spatial accuracy over other SST measurements.