CoastWatch News

The NOAA Advanced Clear-Sky Processor for Ocean (ACSPO) L3S-LEO-PM and L3S-LEO-DY products will be updated from ACSPO v2.80 to ACSPO v2.81 on October 2, 2023.  

The updates from V2.80 are:

Due to a degraded performance of Aqua and Terra Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), which both currently fly in unstable (not corrected) orbits, NOAA near real-time processing of MODIS sea surface temperature (SST) products will be sunset in approximately 15 days.  

Linked here is a brief report from the 2023 CoastWatch Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu from May 22-25. Those outside of NOAA may request access.

Data and products from Sentinel-3A/B OLCI/SLSTR/SRAL  will be delayed due to back-end issues.  Work is in progress to restore the data flow and a catch-up delay will also be incurred.  We hope to have a nominal state by Saturday April 1, 2023.

Thank you for your patience as we work to restore this service.

The West Coast Node (WCN) of CoastWatch is home to thousands of datasets; from ACSPO SST to Vector Winds, their ERDDAP server stores decades of historic climate data. But one group of products stands out with its impact on the coastal communities of California and Southern Oregon: C-HARM.

This year's NOAA CoastWatch Annual Science Meeting will be hosted by OceanWatch Central Pacific Node (OWCP; housed in NMFS/PIFSC). The meeting will be held at the Imin Conference Center (part of the East-West Center) on the campus of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. The location of the annual meeting rotates regionally, and such a meeting occurs in the US Pacific Islands region approximately once every 12 years.

The Cooperative Institute for Satellite Earth System Studies (CISESS) of the University of Maryland is currently recruiting a Global Sea Surface Temperature Scientist.

The CoastWatch ERDDAP will undergo maintenance on January 5, 2023.  Datasets may be unavailable through this service for up to 24 hours.  The ERDDAP is expected to resume normal operations on January 6, 2023.  Please use alternate access points (HTTPS,  THREDDS) for data during this time.

The Ecosystem Indicator Working Group (EIWG) has released an update of the National Marine Ecosystem Status website, which provides easy access to NOAA’s wide range of important coastal and marine ecosystem data. The website provides a holistic view of important ecosystem data and has been newly expanded to the Great Lakes in 2022. New indicators such as the number of days an ecosystem experiences a marine heatwave and changes in the distribution of species have also been added.

The call for abstracts and registration for the Third International Operational Satellite Oceanography Symposium (OSOS-3) are open! OSOS-3 will be held June 12-16, 2023, in Busan South Korea. The abstract submission deadline has been extended to December 11, 2022. The registration deadline is May 12, 2023.

The call for abstracts and registration for the Third International Operational Satellite Oceanography Symposium (OSOS-3) are now open! OSOS-3 will be held June 12-16, 2023, in Busan South Korea. The abstract submission deadline is November 26, 2022, registration deadline is May 12, 2023. Abstract submission instructions, online registration, and additional information can be found on the meeting website.

Update (Oct 31, 2022):  Services restored

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NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory hosting the CoastWatch Gulf of Mexico/Caribbean Node is affected by a network outage.  As a result,  this CoastWatch Node is currently "offline." 

NOAA-15 AVHRR scan motor has been having issues.  NOAA CoastWatch recommends using other spacecraft and ACSPO products (like the new daily L3S global 2km product) for your sea surface temperature needs.  Please connect with the helpdesk at coastwatch.info@noaa.gov if you are looking for additional guidance regarding your switch to alternative SST sources.

The Executive Steering Committee is pleased to invite community members from all levels of the value chain, from data providers to users of operational satellite oceanographic data, products and applications, to attend the third international Operational Satellite Oceanography Symposium (OSOS-3). This Symposium will be held in-person with limited online viewing access (not fully hybrid). We will feature research in Asia and the Pacific, and high latitude.

The SNPP spacecraft entered a non-nominal state at ~16:24:49 UTC on July 26, 2022, after which all SMD and telemetry data was inaccessible. While the root cause continues to be investigated, subsequent contacts have confirmed the spacecraft and all instruments are currently in a safe mode state. Engineering will continue to restore all instruments and science data to an operational state once a plan forward has been determined. All missed data will not be recoverable. The NOAA-20 spacecraft will continue to provide all the primary JPSS science data needs.

Version 3.7.1 b1230 of the CoastWatch Utilities has been released.  Updates include:

Dr. Andrea VanderWoude, the NOAA CoastWatch Great Lakes Node Manager, will be one of the co-instructors for the upcoming AMS Joint Satellite Lake Data and Products Short Course, August 7, 2022, This is a hybrid event with both in-person and remote attendance available. 

Multi-sensor 9 km ocean color products are now available on the data portal and ERDDAP. These global gap-free data come from 3 instruments: the VIIRS sensor aboard both SNPP and NOAA-20, plus the OLCI on Sentinel 3A. The OLCI Level-1B data are from EUMETSAT, and VIIRS Level-1B data are provided by NOAA, JPSS. The NOAA/STAR Ocean Color Team then produce the chlorophyll, light attenuation (downwelling) at 490 nm (K_d490), and Suspended Particulate Material (SPM) analysis products on a ~10 day delay.

Most data streams and services have been restored.  S-3A/B Level-2 OLCI data are still undergoing consolidation.  Broken links may appear for retrospective data during this transition.  Contact coastwatch.info@noaa.gov if you need assistance in locating data. 

From May 9 - May 12, 2022, CoastWatch hosted their hybrid Annual Science Meeting, the first since the onset of the pandemic. 91 participants registered to attend, with most participating virtually and up to 25 attendees in person at the NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction (NCWCP) Building on the University of Maryland Campus in College Park, Maryland. The majority of attendees were NOAA affiliates or federal employees, though members of academia, representatives of non-government organizations, and state/local government workers also participated.

Visible satellite images taken during the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption that occured on Jan. 15, 2022.

The NOAA STAR (Center for Satellite Applications and Research) Water Surface Conditions/Sea Surface RoughnessTeam has developed an arctic normalized radar cross section (NRCS) daily composite from multiple spacecraft synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instruments at 1km resolution. 

The CoastWatch / OceanWatch / PolarWatch Program (CW / OW / PW) held its annual science meeting September 27-30, 2021, hosted virtually by the East Coast Regional Node. The meeting was a chance for the six regional nodes and the CW/OW/PW Central Operations team to convene with data users and scientists on the progress of current projects, the needs of the user community, new satellite data products including those from upcoming satellite missions, and the status of applications and tools for meeting environmental concerns.

The Gulf of Mexico loop current brings warm Caribbean water northward between the Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba and into the Gulf. The current loops around the Gulf, flows southeastward into the Florida Strait where it serves as a parent to the Florida current and ultimately joins the Gulf Stream.