The next NOAA CoastWatch Satellite Training Course will be held online, 3 to 7 May 2021.

Hosted by NOAA PolarWatch

Registration is now open. Learn about available environmental satellite data and gain hands on experience accessing data and incorporating it into your projects.

Information & Registration 

Changes are being made to our polar ice products.  We are adding metadata to make the products more interoperable across services and software.  Some of these changes include adding axes and long_name attributes for better compatibility with online services. 

Reminder on the planned discontinuation of NOAA-18/-19 AVHRR SST regional products from NOAA CoastWatch.

Products will cease distribution on February 3, 2021.

Topic: Termination of the CoastWatch SST products from NOAA-18 and NOAA-19

Date/Time Issued:  January 26, 2021

Product(s) or Data Impacted:  CoastWatch SST products from NOAA-18 and NOAA-19

Date/Time of Initial Impact: February 3, 2021 UTC

Date/Time of Expected End: N/A

NOAA CoastWatch is excited about the US-European spacecraft Sentinel-6.  The satellite is scheduled to launch on Saturday, November 21, 2020 at 9:17:08 a.m. PST (12:17:08 p.m. EST) . 

NOAA CoastWatch is encouraging our users to participate in this upcoming workshop (and/or the survey) and have their interests heard and documented.  CoastWatch will also participate as a stakeholder.  We are not the host of these activities.

S-NPP and NOAA-20 VIIRS data are unavailable for processing within NESDIS/STAR (data should be available through NESDIS/OSPO).  The issue is being worked and we expect data flow/processing to resume within the next 24 hours.

A new release of the CoastWatch Utilities is available.

Updates:

Data from Aqua MODIS remain unavailable due to a spacecraft recorder issue.  Please contact the CoastWatch helpdesk (coastwatch.info@noaa.gov) for assistance in selecting alternative data/products.  We will continue to provide updates on this issue.  

East Coast Node has cancelled their 3-day satellite data training course originally scheduled for 23-25 June in Charleston, SC. 

Subscribe to get updates on training courses and other announcements.

The global, multi-sensor, gap-filled (i.e., DINEOF), science quality chlorophyll is now on the CoastWatch Data Portal.  This URL link will open the Data Portal with this  gap-filled product in the scene.  Reminder that science quality ocean color data are available on a ~2-week delay, so use the calendar to view

Unforeseen issues have arisen affecting our website links and behind the scenes product processing.  Please bear with us as products and services are restored.  Should you have immediate needs,  please email our help-desk (coastwatch.info@noaa.gov) as there may be secondary URLs to access data products. 

Some of the more prominent known issues include:

Due to an IT issue,  the CoastWatch East Coast Node website is temporarily inaccessible.  We expect services to be restored soon.  If you have immediate data requirements,  please contact coastwatch.info@noaa.gov.

Sentinel 3B products are back online at CoastWatch.

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Planned processing changes are scheduled for Thursday January 30, 2020.  There may be a delay in the processing and distribution of CoastWatch Level-2 (RGB) and Level 3 (mapped) products.  These changes will not affect data products nor data access pathway.  Products delivery times should return to normal by February 1, 2020. 

Level-2 data passthrough from EUMETSAT will not be impacted. 

Users of VIIRS ocean color products should be aware of a processing anomaly that affected products for the days of 16 and 17 January 2020.  The source of the problem in the satellite data records (SDR; i.e., Level 1) has been resolved as of 18 January production.  CoastWatch will be assessing impacts on CoastWatch products (environmental data records EDR or Level 2; and higher level processing, Level 3, Level 4) for this period.   Some data files may be flagged or removed.  Please consider potential impacts to your applications if you have routinely ingested VIIRS near real time

The near real time ACSPO Global SST from MODIS Aqua and Terra processing has been restored and will backfill recent missing days.

A new release of the CW Utilities is available.  Version 3.5.1 (build 762) includes:

Updates

The top level Sea Surface Salinity thredds catalog is here:  https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/thredds/socd/coastwatch/catalog_smos_smap.html

Geostrophic Currents are now included in the Sea Level Height Anomaly product provided from the NOAA Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry.  The CoastWatch product description page has also been upda

CoastWatch Data Portal has been updated with new features and additional datasets

In situ ocean color database (Beta) GUI Search Tool - released for public access

NOAA CoastWatch THREDDS and FTP servers will undergo maintenance on Tuesday May 28, 2019 at 1100 EDT (1500UTC)  [changed from 0800 EDT (1200 UTC)]. Services and data in NetCDF/HDF formats may be unavailable for up to 2 hours. See the News section on the CoastWatch website for updates regarding this planned maintenance event. The following URLs will be affected:

The night-time Blended SST product is currently distributed in two NetCDF variants. The legacy NetCDF Blended product (generated from HDF) will be discontinued in July 2019. These products have the following naming convention and a filesize of ~106MB:

sst_geo-polar-blended_night_5km_YYYYJJJ.nc
[where YYYY=Year, and JJJ=Day of Year]

The operational production of the Global Area Coverage (GAC; 4km/nadir) ACSPO SST data from AVHRR instruments aboard NOAA-18/19, and Metop-A/B will be discontinued on or after June 2, 2019. From that point on, ACSPO SSTs will continue to be available from three Full Resolution Area Coverage (FRAC; ~1km/nadir) mid-morning ("AM") Metop-A, -B and -C, and from two VIIRSs (~750m/nadir) onboard afternoon ("PM") NPP and NOAA-20. ACSPO SST from all historical AVHRR/2 and /3 GAC records will only be available in a reprocessing mode, as a part of ACSPO AVHRR GAC Reanalysis ("RAN") project.

Ocean Color near real-time is restored and includes the release of VIIRS NOAA-20.  Coming in April:  A daily global blended VIIRS (SNPP plus NOAA-20) for chlorophyll and downwelling attenuation coefficient (Kd(490)).

The Operational Satellite Oceanography (OSO) Training Day on Monday, 17 June 2019, in association with the OSO Symposium  in Washington DC area will cover 3 topics and will allot time for individual guidance:

1) Ocean satellite products available

2) Data discovery, access and tools

3) Example applications

4) Time for individual guidance or assistance.

Participants are encourage to bring their own laptops.  No terminals will be provided.

FIRST INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONAL SATELLITE OCEANOGRAPHY SYMPOSIUM

Open access to the enterprise OceanWatch Monitor (OM) online tool now available (v1.0).

The following NOAA CoastWatch data servers will be removed from service on or about December 15, 2018:

A third day has been added to the agenda of the First International Operational Satellite Oceanography Symposium, now18-20 June 2019 in College Park, MD, convenient to Washington DC [revised flyer].  A training session will be included.

Data Quality UPDATE: Near Real Time VIIRS SNPP Ocean Color products quality issue resolved with data beginning March 2, 2018.

Dear Users,

The calibration issue affecting the NOAA/IDPS Sensor Data Record (SDR, i.e., L1B) for VIIRS SNPP and the Near Real Time Ocean Color Environmental Data Record (EDR) has been resolved. Data processed as of March 2, 2018 and onward meet quality standards. Thank you for using NOAA CoastWatch/OceanWatch data.

The S-NPP VIIRS ocean color products produced within NOAA STAR are undergoing a processing change (products produced in near real-time operationally within OSPO will remain unchanged). As a result, beginning February 20, 2018 the following changes are expected:

Dear CoastWatch VIIRS Ocean Color User,

Good news! The NOAA VIIRS Science Quality Ocean Color Level 2 Environmental Data Record products have been improved. Currently, CoastWatch is replacing the entire mission-long dataset with the new dataset from MSL12 v1.21 reprocessing. The new dataset will be available August 9,2017. Please check back soon to access full mission, MLS12 v1.21 VIIRS ocean color products.

Thanks for your interest in CoastWatch data. Please consider signing up for our mailing list for future announcements.

NOAA CoastWatch/OceanWatch is now distributing daily Level-3 sea level anomaly datasets produced by the NOAA Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry. The datasets are produced globally with near-real time data from a constellation of radar altimeter missions.

Click here for more information: https://coastwatch.noaa.gov/cw_html/SSH_SeaLevelAnomaly.html

Click here for more information: VIIRS Science Quality L2