Covering over 70% of Earth’s surface, oceans play an extremely important role in our climate and in our lives. Over the last 50 years, oceans have absorbed over 90% of the extra heat in the atmosphere caused by greenhouse gases. Monitoring the skin, or surface, temperature of the world’s oceans is important for climate science, with the United Framework Convention on Climate Change considering it as an Essential Climate Variable. Exchanges of heat and water vapour between the ocean and the atmosphere have an influential role in the generation and intensity of tropical hurricanes and can also modify regional weather patterns, causing serious drought and flood events by diverting storms – a key signature of the El Niño and Indian Ocean dipole climate phenomena.