Introducing OceanWatch Voyager
Introducing OceanWatch Voyager
Posted January 30, 2018NOAA’s CoastWatch/OceanWatch program funded PacIOOS to develop and tailor a separate instance of our Voyager online interactive map interface to support visualization and user-friendly data access. The OceanWatch Voyager contains a suite of oceanographic satellite-based remote sensing products that the Central Pacific Regional Node of the nationwide NOAA CoastWatch/OceanWatch program distributes. OceanWatch is embedded within the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC), in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. Its mission is to provide and ensure timely access to near real-time satellite data to protect, restore, and manage U.S. coastal and ocean resources and understand climate variability and change to further enhance society’s quality of life. The OceanWatch Voyager can be accessed at the following location:
http://pacioos.org/voyager/oceanwatch.html
http://pacioos.org/voyager/oceanwatch.html
Currently, OceanWatch Voyager includes the following OceanWatch global satellite data products listed below. Note that these can also be displayed in our existing PacIOOS Voyager, but in this instance they become the primary focus:
- Aquarius 1° (~100 km) weekly and monthly sea surface salinity (2011-2015)
- Advanced SCATterometer (ASCAT) 0.25° (~25 km) daily wind (2013-present)
- Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) Pathfinder v4.1 and Global Area Coverage (GAC) 0.1° (~8 km) 3-day daily composite, weekly, and monthly sea surface temperature (1985-2016)
- AVHRR Pathfinder v5 and v5.1 0.05° (~4 km) weekly, monthly, and monthly climatologies of sea surface temperature (1981-2009)
- NOAA CoastWatch Caribbean/Gulf of Mexico (CWCGOM) satellite altimeter 0.2° (~20 km) daily sea height anomaly and geostrophic currents (2006-present)
- Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) plus Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellites (POES) 0.05° (~4 km) 2-day daily composite, weekly, and monthly sea surface temperature (2012-present)
- Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Aqua 0.05° (~4 km) weekly, monthly, and monthly climatologies of chlorophyll-a (2002-present)
- Quick Scatterometer (QuikSCAT) 0.5° (~40 km) 3-day daily composite, weekly, and monthly wind (1999-2009)
- Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) 0.1° (~9 km) weekly, monthly, and monthly climatologies of chlorophyll-a (1997-2010)
- Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) 0.05° (~4 km) weekly and monthly chlorophyll-a (2012-present)
OceanWatch also funded PacIOOS to develop a new area statistics tool in Voyager for computing the mean, median, minimum, maximum, and/or standard deviation of the above data products over a user-selected geographic bounding box in order to support their users’ frequent need for gathering trends and insights over larger areas spanning multiple pixels. View our recent Voyager announcement for further details and examples of using this new utility.
The OceanWatch Voyager also incorporates bathymetry and various ancillary navigation overlays to help provide additional geographic context, such as coastlines and Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ), for U.S. interests throughout the insular Pacific. Other OceanWatch Central Pacific Regional Node data layers may be added in the future as the catalog continues to evolve. Please contact the OceanWatch Operations Manager, Melanie Abecassis (melanie.abecassis@noaa.gov), for any questions pertaining to OceanWatch Voyager and its data holdings.
