The Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) instrument on-board the METOP satellite is designed to provide very accurate measurements of Sea Surface Temperature (SST). In this work, using one year of METOP-AVHRR data and a geostatistical approach, we characterize the spatial anisotropy and non-stationarity of the SST variability using oriented ellipsoids. The method is also able to separate the true SST variability from the artificial error introduced by the METOP-AVHRR sensor. These spatial parameters are then used for producing variability atlases (available on-line) over the whole ocean.