Data & Products

Data and products of various types will be available via GCOOS. Some of these will be supported directly with funding obtained by the GCOOS-RA; others will be supported by other entities (public and private) and made available via GCOOS. Data types include remotely-sensed data from satellites, high frequency radar units, and occasionally aircraft as well as in situ observations from ships, buoys, drill and production platforms, fixed towers, autonomous underwater vehicles, and moorings. Likewise a wide array of products will result. It is envisioned that some products will be openly available via GCOOS while others will be produced by private sector entities and offered for sale—this is the situation for meteorological products.

At the present time most observations and products made from them are supported by the private sector for their needs or by federal, state, or local governments to meet their legislated mandates. If these observations were openly available, they could be used, sometimes in combinations with other observations, to produce additional products needed by other users/stakeholders.

A primary objective of the GCOOS-RA is to seek the open distribution of non-proprietary data streams that are routinely collected in near-real time. Considerable success has been achieved, and these data streams are assembled, controlled for quality, and distributed by the NOAA National Data Buoy Center. (That Center has information on its web site regarding access to data.) These observations include surface meteorological data, wave height and direction, sea surface temperature, sea level, surface and subsurface currents, and salinity. Additional measurements are or will be added (e.g., optical properties or detection of harmful algal blooms at fixed locations). GCOOS is building a data portal which will allow stakeholders easy access to real time data streams; data searches maybe carried out by the stakeholders or by their computers.

Plans are to add access to available products and then to produce and add selected new products required by stakeholders.