National Aeronautics and Space Administration official home page

 

University of Rhode Island official home page

 

Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island official home page
Data Portal Access

Five thematic portals represent the top level entry point during the data discovery process. THREDDS catalogs were used to organize, describe and provide access to the relevant data collections for each portal.

Sea Surface Temperature. These SST data include daily to monthly time series on regional or global grids that vary in resolution between 1.1 km and 1°. Some of the more important data are from the Pathfinder AVHRR, MODIS and GOES sensors. The Pathfinder data is particularly important because of its fine resolution between 1.1 km (regional) and 4.6 km (global) and its longer time series going back to 1985.

 

Sea surface temperature field for the western North Atlantic showing the Gulf Stream off the eastern coast of the United States

 

Sea Surface Height. Maps of sea level anomalies from various orbiting altimeters are mostly from the AVISO collection. The coverage is global and available from 1992 to the present on 1/3° or 1° grids at 3.5 day resolution.

 

Sea Surface Height field of the eastern Pacific Ocean showing a strong El Nino.

 

Ocean Surface Winds. Data includes wind speed, as well as meridional and zonal components of wind stress, pseudostress and velocity. The QuikSCAT scatterometer data is the most comprehensive data set, providing daily time series data on a 1/4° global grid since 1999.

 

Surface ocean wind field under a hurricane.

Ocean Color. Chlorophyll concentration of the surface ocean as measured by the CZCS, SeaWiFS and MODIS sensors. SeaWiFS data, produced since 1997, is available on weekly global grids at 9km resolution. The regional MODIS data is still experimental but available on daily grids at 1.25 km resolution.

 

Chlorophyll field of the North and South Atlantic.

Ocean Surface Precipitation. The TRMM data, available since 1997, is the most important data collection and includes monthly rainfall maps over the tropical ocean from 40° N. to 40° S. at 1/2°, 1°, and 5° resolution.

 

Rainfall intensity near the center of Hurricane Katrina shows areas of deep convection where latent heat is being released into the storm.
Other Ocean Data. These other data sets, on 1° global grids, include variables such as latent, sensible, and radiative heat fluxes as well as precipitable water over the surface ocean. The OAFlux data from WHOI provides daily and monthly air-sea heat fluxes back to 1981 with a revised version currently being developed back to 1958. The AIRS Products include atmospheric measurements at daily, weekly and monthly resolution since 2002. Average distribution of water vapor in January 2003, measured from the Earth's surface to the top of the atmosphere.