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We are experiencing processing and distribution issues. The following datasets are affected:
Services distributing these data:
We are working to resolve these issues. At this time, we do not have an estimated time/date of a return to service.
Dr. Sherry Palacios from CSUMB utilizes CoastWatch ERDDAP, Data Portal, and training materials in her oceanography curricula. Read the full story here.
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.
Forecasters at the Grand Rapids Weather Forecast Office describe how they use CoastWatch data to predict lake effect snow, freezing spray, and more. Read the full story here.
Meteorologists at the Cleveland Weather Forecast Office tell a story exemplifying how CoastWatch data supports their mission, and how accurate predictions can save lives. Read the full story here.
Are you interested in using oceanographic satellite data in your work but don't know where to start? The NOAA CoastWatch program offers in-person and online courses, where participants learn about environmental satellite data and how to easily obtain it. Participants also gain hands-on experience working with the data that may help their projects and application. A major goal of the course is to provide scientists who are not regular users of satellite data with the knowledge and tools they need to incorporate satellite data into their research and management projects.
Our backend systems will undergo maintenance that may cause a delay in some data products. We do not expect a prolonged outage, but during this period, data/web pages may not be accessible through HTTPS/FTP/THREDDS/ERDDAP or visualized via our data portal map viewer.
We expect this potential disruption to occur Tuesday 0930-1030 EST (1430 - 1530Z) Mar 1, 2022. Follow-on maintenance will occur Thursday 0930-1030 EST (1430 - 1530Z) Mar 3, 2022.
Check out our new brochure to learn more about NOAA CoastWatch and see some examples of use cases for ocean satellite data.
This one-day virtual short course, taught by NOAA CoastWatch and hosted through the American Meteorological Society (AMS) has been cancelled.
RIVA Solutions, Inc. is seeking to bring in a new member to the join the NOAA CoastWatch https://coastwatch.noaa.gov Central Operations team based in College Park, MD.
Position Title: Sr. Scientific Programmer
TH017: AGU
VIRTUAL TOWN HALL
Satellite Data for Ocean and Coastal Science and Applications: Products, Tools, and Access Services Through NOAA.
Wednesday, December 8, 2021
7:15 p.m. - 8:15 p.m. EST
AGU attendees, learn about available global and regional data products and how to access them.
NOAA CoastWatch scientists will answer your questions!
Are you interested in using oceanographic satellite data in your work but don't know where to start? The NOAA CoastWatch program offers in-person and online courses, where participants learn about environmental satellite data and how to easily obtain it. Participants also gain hands-on experience working with the data that may help their projects and application. A major goal of the course is to provide scientists who are not regular users of satellite data with the knowledge and tools they need to incorporate satellite data into their research and management projects.
The Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research (CIMAR) is currently recruiting for a permanent Researcher position to work with OceanWatch Central Pacific Node of the NOAA CoastWatch/OceanWatch/PolarWatch Program. The researcher will be based at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu, HI, and work closely with the NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center’s Ecosystem Sciences Division.
DEADLINE: Please note the deadline to apply is 11/15/2021
NOAA CoastWatch will no longer provide sea surface temperature (SST) or wind products from Metop-A. CoastWatch has added Metop-C sea surface temperature and vector winds data to its portfolio as a replacement for these products.
Per the EUMETSAT announcement:
The Metop-A satellite, launched on 19 October 2006, has massively exceeded its design lifetime of five years. However, it is now time for it to retire.
Version 3.7.0 of the CoastWatch Utilities has been released. Updates include improved NetCDF reading and writing, registration algorithms, documentation, and cloud enhancements - like writing cloud optimized geoTIFFs. See the CoastWatch Utilities page for more details and to obtain this new release.
Services provided by the AOML hosted Atlantic OceanWatch / Gulf of Mexico-Caribbean node will be offline for planned maintenance beginning 1500HRS EDT 17 SEP2021 until mid-day 19SEP2021. Data processing may lag when services are restored.
Corrected science quality L2 data has been posted (replaces previous dataset).
Prior message 04AUG2021: S-NPP VIIRS Ocean Color Science Quality data/products from 5/10/2021 are being reprocessed due to issues with ancillary input data. Products have been removed from distribution and will be replaced with their corrected counterparts.
On Tuesday Aug 24 between 09:00-11:00 EDT STAR IT Team will be upgrading the public STAR FTP server ftp://ftp.star.nesdis.noaa.gov and www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/thredds/ (along with other STAR controlled virtual hosts/thredds/ )
Data from S-NPP and NOAA-20 VIIRS was delayed due to external network issues. Expect delays in product availability.
More information: https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Operations/messages.html
DMSP F-15 end of mission occurred Aug 9, 2021 around 0424 EDT (0824Z) as controllers and engineering executed the end-of-life (EOL) CP. Around 0054 EDT (0454Z) the spacecraft had lost earth lock and that the end of the mission was imminent.
All products derived from SSMI data are discontinued.
Original Message: https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/messages/2021/MSG221180402.html
Topic: Termination of DMSP F-15 (SSMI-9) Products
Beginning August 3, 2021 12:46:45 UTC, the S-NPP spacecraft entered a state where it was no longer mission pointing and instruments were placed in safehold. Users should expect a gap of S-NPP VIIRS data from August 3, 2021 12:46:45 UTC until full recovery of the VIIRS instrument.
CoastWatch resumed processing at 0000Z on August 6, 2021 (Day of Year 218).
Status updates:
20210805
The NESDIS Product Distribution and Access (PDA) system will undergo planned failover that will affect the timeliness of some CoastWatch products. Products from GOES, S-NPP, NOAA-20, and MetOp spacecraft will be affected (sea surface temperature, winds, sea level anomaly, ocean color: chlorophyll, Kd490).
Topic: Planned PDA Partial Failover to CBU and Full Outage of PDA OPS at NSOF
Date/Time Issued: June 24, 2021 1756Z
The Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research (JIMAR) is currently recruiting for a permanent Researcher position to work with NOAA’s CoastWatch/OceanWatch/PolarWatch Program (https://coastwatch.noaa.gov/cw/index.html) who will be based at the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center’s Ecosystem Sciences Division in Honolulu, HI. The
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.
Maintenance is planned for infrastructure housing NOAA CoastWatch processing. Although much of the processing has redundancy, there is a possibility of a data outage. An outage may occur beginning 20 February 2021. Affected product processing may not be restored until 22 February 2021. Return-to-service times will vary based on the assurance level associated with the affected product.
Products impacted: All [SST, Ocean Color, Altimetry, SAR, etc]
Services impacted: All [Websites, THREDDS, ERDDAP, FTP, CDN]
Times: 20-21 February 2021
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.
On March 1, 2021, legacy/heritage CoastWatch regional AVHRR and VIIRS products in HDF format will no longer be distributed by vmcwsst3 [or accessible using the 'cwdownload' utility]. [Note, NOAA-18 and NOAA-19 products ceased production 03FEB2021]
These products will continue to be processed and available to users through the following outlets:
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
Processing underway and near real-time L2 data are available.
Prior notice 02DEC2020:
Level-2 ocean color products from S-NPP and NOAA-20 VIIRS are currently suspended during a system upgrade. These products should resume within the next 48 hours. Products that are generated from the Level-2, such as global 4 km and 750 m regional products are impacted.
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) .
EUMETSAT and NOAA are co-organizing the second International Operational Satelltie Oceanography Symposium which will build on our first gathering in June 2019 of community members involved in all levels of the observation-to-information value chain, from data providers to users, of operational satellite oceanographic data, products and applications.
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LATEST NEWS |
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.
The Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research (JIMAR) is currently recruiting an Analyst to work with NOAA’s CoastWatch/OceanWatch/PolarWatch Program (https://coastwatch.noaa.gov/cw/index.html) who will be based at the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center’s Ecosystem Sciences Division in Honolulu, HI. The Analyst will manage the
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.
Navigation errors in the NOAA-18/-19 AVHRR (legacy) CoastWatch SST product have been resolved. Data are now within the nominal 2 pixel registration.
See prior news item for more information on the observed issue.
A new release of the CoastWatch Utilities is available.
Updates:
Announcing the planned discontinuation of NOAA-18 and NOAA-19 AVHRR SST products from NOAA CoastWatch:
Due to the availability of higher quality data, our operational partners will be discontinuing the processing of regional sea surface temperature products from AVHRR aboard NOAA-18 and NOAA-19 in December, 2020. Products will continue to be provided from Metop-A and Metop-B AVHRR instruments and S-NPP and NOAA-20 VIIRS instruments.
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.
Products are delayed due to processing system issues.
***Update: The navigational errors in the AVHRR products have been resolved. Data should appear within the nominal 2 pixel accuracy. Please be advised, the NOAA-18 and NOAA-19 products will be discontinued in December 2020.
Prior post:
The global, multi-sensor, near real time DINEOF gap-filled, chlorophyll has been relased, View and access data through the Data Portal or directly download data from the services linked from the satellite data product page under the "data access" tab.
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.
Processing systems are undergoing maintenance 18-22 MAY 2020. This may adversely impact product processing and data distribution. It is anticipated delays will not exceed 72 hours and will vary by product. All products may be affected.
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
Ocean Surface Vector Winds from ASCAT on Metop A (2) and Metop B (1) are now available on THREDDS server
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:
The East Coast Node website is running again. Visit the site at https://eastcoast.coastwatch.noaa.gov.
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.
The next CoastWatch satellite data training course is 7 to 9 April 2020 in Anchorage, AK at the National Parks Building, taught by the West Coast Node and PolarWatch. Go here for more information about the course itself, FAQ's as well as travel logistics. Registration is now open.
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.
East Coast Node has announced details for their 3-day training course 23-25 June in Charleston, SC
Are you interested in using oceanographic satellite data in your work but don't know where to start? The NOAA CoastWatch East Coast Regional Node will offer a three-day course, June 23-25, 2020, at the Hollings Marine Laboratory in Charleston, SC, where participants will learn about environmental satellite data and how to easily obtain it. Participants also gain hands on experience working with the data of interest to them.
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.
CoastWatch has a service outage of the near real time ACSPO Global SST from MODIS Aqua and Terra. We are investigating the problem and will work to restore service as soon as possible. If you need an alternative for your polar-orbiting, SST needs, try ACSPO VIIRS SST.
A new release of the CW Utilities is available. Version 3.5.1 (build 762) includes:
Updates
After more than 11 years in orbit and well beyond its three- to five-year mission baseline, the Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM) on Jason-2 will permanently cease acquisition of scientific data at 06:48 UTC on 1 October 2019 due to aging-related issues onboard the spacecraft. Approximately three hours later, the final pass 147 for science cycle 644 will be produced as an OGDR product and disseminated to operational users. IGDR production will cease about 2.5 days later, GDR production approximately 2 months later.
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
New Satellite Data Products have been added to the CoastWatch Website:
CoastWatch Data Portal has been updated with new features and additional datasets
Three satellite training courses taught by NOAA CoastWatch Nodes are open for sign up:
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 1st Operational Satellite Oceanography (OSO) Symposium, a joint meeting co-organized by EUMETSAT and
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]
A new release of the CoastWatch software is available. Changes include using Java OpenSDK11.0 and performance improvements to cwregister, cwmath, and cwcomposite. Accuracy improvements were made to mapping data with terrain-corrected locations to reduce mapping errors over land. See the CoastWatch Utilities page for more details and access to the new release.
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 Product and Processing Update:
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)).
As of 13MAR2019, CoastWatch distribution of data and products has been sporadic due to numerous issues. The following products are currently unavailable:
The following products were delayed:
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.
As of 09MAR2019, CoastWatch distribution of S-NPP VIIRS Ocean Color Level-2/-3 data and products has been sporadic. Copernicus mission data distribution was delayed Mar 09 to March 11 2019. Level-3 SST (legacy HDF reginal products) were delayed and being backfilled (Note: https://cw2.espc.nesdis.noaa.gov/data/ hold legacy SST and win
The NOAA CoastWatch Data Portal combines multiple search tools into a single map client. This initial release integrates the L1/L2 Spatial/Time Search and visualization of global mapped data from our THREDDS service.
Open access to the enterprise OceanWatch Monitor (OM) online tool now available (v1.0).
Advanced Clear - Sky Processor for Oceans (ACSPO) Product Update
The Advanced Clear-Sky Processor for Oceans (ACSPO) for VIIRS instruments will be promoted from version 2.41 to version 2.60 on or about October 18, 2018.
New in version 2.60
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.
FIRST INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONAL SATELLITE OCEANOGRAPHY SYMPOSIUM
18 to 20 June 2019 Washington, DC Area, NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction, College Park, MD, USA
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.
Data Quality NOTICE: Near Real Time VIIRS SNPP Ocean Color products are severely degraded from 16 February 2018 until further notice.
Dear Users,
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:
Users of geo-SST products,
This notice is to inform you and your group that certain legacy geo-SST products will be discontinued or severely impacted with the transition of GOES-13 to GOES-16 on or about November 20, 2017.
The legacy GOES-13 SST products, (gridded, in binary format) were not planned for continuation for GOES-16.
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 Sentinel-3 OLCI Level-2 and Level-3 ocean color datasets. Data is provided courtesy of EUMETSAT as part of the Copernicus Program. NOAA CoastWatch will be increasing product coverage over the next month.
For more information, please refer to our OLCI near real-time product page.
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
NOAA CoastWatch/OceanWatch is currently distributing near-real time Level-1B full resolution global ocean data from OLCI-Sentinel-3A Copernicus mission in support of operational oceanography.
True color image produced today (15 February 2017) by NOAACoastWatch/OceanWatch from OLCI-Sentinel-3A data.
Click here for more information: VIIRS Science Quality L2
CoastWatch Utilities 3.4.1 is now available, please see latest update.
