The Value of Geostationary Satellite Imagery in IOOS, Now and Future

Abstract

The United States is embarking on the implementation of an Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS), as part of a broader global environmental observation effort, in order to increase the understanding of the ocean environment to derive societal benefits. These benefits will be achieved by making timely, accurate observations of the environment leading to quality predictions and forecasts of the environment and the consequences on the public. To this end, IOOS will consist of an observing subsystem, a modeling and analysis subsystem, and a data management and communications subsystem that ties it all together. The observing subsystem will provide sustained in situ and remotely-sensed measurements of the coastal and global ocean. Initially, IOOS will derive observations from existing operational and pre-operational programs and subsequently incorporate observations from novel programs as they attain operational status. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) program, and its follow-on, GOES-R, will play a key role in IOOS. The IOOS Development Plan calls for the GOES program to support the coastal and global components of the observing subsystem. Coordination of technology and applications across the various international geostationary satellite programs (GOES, MTSAT, METEOSAT, INSAT) will achieve a truly global observation system. In the near-term, GOES will be able to provide global and coastal zone sea surface temperature, sea ice, and heat flux observations that will impact some of the IOOS societal goals. As GOES-R comes online in the next decade, the planned sensor suite will permit the measurement of a variety of new core parameters including ocean color, optical properties, surface currents, and possibly bathymetry. Observing those new parameters in a frequency, spatial extent, and spatial resolution never before achieved will open up a new horizon of potential impacts on the societal benefits of IOOS