NOAA Coastwatch/Oceanwatch/Polarwatch: A bridge from ocean satellite data to applications and information

Abstract

The purpose of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) CoastWatch/OceanWatch/PolarWatch Program (a.k.a. “CoastWatch”, https://coastwatch.noaa.gov) is to improve decision outcomes by facilitating the use of ocean satellite data in applications and research. NOAA CoastWatch provides free and open access to global and regional satellite data products for use in understanding, managing and protecting ocean and coastal resources and for assessing impacts of environmental change in ecosystems, weather, and climate. Satellites make observations from which several ocean, coastal, and inland water parameters can be derived. Ocean observations from space have the advantage of broad spatial and temporal coverage that complement in situ measurements. While NOAA may be known for operating satellites for use in weather forecasting by the National Weather Service (NWS), NOAA also routinely produces satellite-based ocean data products in support of all NOAA mission services including NWS, National Marine Fisheries Service and National Ocean Service, and the office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. These ocean products are freely and openly available to everyone, including government, academic, commercial and general public users. NOAA CoastWatch has existed since 1989 when the primary focus was on distributing sea surface temperature data for continental US regions. With time and in response to the continual development of ocean observations from space, the CoastWatch scope has expanded. CoastWatch satellite data products now include multiple environmental parameters such as sea surface temperature, ocean color (chlorophyll, etc.), sea surface height (altimetry), ocean winds, surface roughness (synthetic aperture radar), salinity and sea ice. These products have global and regional coverage and near real-time as well as delayed-mode, higher quality and longer term time series datasets. CoastWatch customizes, serves and monitors ocean satellite data products from NOAA and/or non-NOAA satellite missions. We serve a broad audience who use ocean satellite data in operational oceanographic applications. Here, the word “operational” has an expanded definition compared with traditional weather service usage. The program is organized as a “hub and spokes”. The “hub” has the primary processing responsibilities and co-located with the ocean satellite environmental data record (EDR; i.e., Level 2) producers. The “spokes” are regional Nodes distributed geographically and across NOAA mission line offices, CoastWatch is well-positioned to bridge upstream ocean EDR producers with downstream user needs. The new interactive data portal enables search and discovery, multi-product visualization and customizable data downloading. Casual or occasional users can search, view and download data products using online interactive tools, including a space and time search. Routine “power” users can use command-line scripts to automate their access. CoastWatch maintains a helpdesk which responds to everything from educating and guiding novice users, help with discovering data products for specific applications, code suggestions to setup routine queries and downloads, etc. The OceanWatch Monitor (https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/socd/om/) enables the assessment of data products over time and in comparison with reference datasets and an internal Data Monitor tracks operational production output. Beyond the helpdesk, CoastWatch offers training courses, develops tutorials to educate and guide users from the novice to the expert. CoastWatch also develops and distributes CoastWatch Utilities (https://coastwatch.noaa.gov/cw/user-resources/coastwatch-utilities.html), a software package, to help users analyze and visualize satellite data products. Some examples of data products, discovery and access pathways, tutorials and several user applications will be presented.