Validated satellite-derived sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are widely used for climate monitoring and ocean data assimilation systems. In this study, the Fengyun-3A (FY-3A) SST experimental product is evaluated using Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR)-merged and in situ SSTs. A comparison of AVHRR-merged SSTs reveals a negative bias of more than 2 K in FY-3A SSTs in most of the tropical Pacific and low-latitude Indian and Atlantic Oceans. The error variance of FY-3A SSTs is estimated using three-way er-ror analysis. FY-3A SSTs show regional error variance in global oceans with a maximum error variance of 2.2 K in the Pacific Ocean. In addition, a significant seasonal variation of error variance is present in FY-3A SSTs, which indicates that the quality of FY-3A SST could be improved by adjusting the parameters in the SST retrieval algorithm and by applying regional and seasonal algo-rithms, particularly in key areas such as the tropical Pa-cific Ocean. An objective analysis method is used to merge FY-3A SSTs with the drifter buoy data. The errors of FY-3A SSTs are decreased to –0.45K comparing with SST observations from GTSPP.