Sea surface temperature （SST） is an important indicator of the climate change. The Along Track Scanning Radiometer （ATSR） onboard the European Space Agency’s first remote sensing satellite （ERS 1） was designed to provide high accurate SST. ATSR SST during the period of 1991 to 1992 was compared with simultaneous in situ SST measured by NOAA’s Tropical Atmospheric Ocean （TAO） Array of moored ocean buoys in the tropical Pacific and JMA’s ocean data buoys in the northwest Pacific. The comparisons show that ATSR SST derived from 3.7 μm

10.8 μm and 12 μm dual view birghtness temperature in the tropical Pacific has a much higher accuracy

with a bias of -0.22 K and a standard deviation of 0.25 K against in situ SST. While

in the northwest Pacific

the bias is -0.51 K and the standard deviation is 0.61 K. The results demonstrate that ATSR can measure SST with a very high accuracy in the tropical Pacific under the volcanic aerosol contamination due to the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in June 1991. The accuracy of ATSR SST in the northwest Pacific needs to be improved. Simulation using LOWTRAN 7 was carried out to analyze influence of aerosols on the retrieval of ATSR SST.