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MDL COURSE 301: Survey of Operational Oceanographic Products
Version: 8-7-2014
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THIS COURSE consists of numerous exercises to find and obtain operational oceanographic (OO) products (from various national and international agencies) and synthesize them into new products on a single software platform. Many products are only a few hours old, but a few are necessarily in the days- to week-old category, appropriate to time scales of the various ocean processes and sensor issues. Prior to the course, each student must read through a list of background articles in the IODE OceanTeacher Academy Digital Library. At the end of the course, each student is asked to send in a personal project presentation, if that option has been adopted.
Requires a minimum of a T-1 Internet connection at all times, due to heavy download activity and/or direct online connections to some OO servers. Required Software (latest versions; Windows or Mac; 32-bit or 64-bit): Integrated Data Viewer (IDV), Google Earth |
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1. Pre-course Reading
Please just try to get through prior to the course. The articles are not long, nor very technical. You don't need to follow the many links in the articles, unless you are curious about the subtopic. |
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2. Integration of Marine Data Resources - Click on the chart to open a more readable version
Marine data management, quite simply, is a balancing act between the 3 major concepts: Formats, Software and Data. You need to become familiar with major resources in all categories, and how they work together. In years gone past, scientists had to slog through numerous format conversions (including writing necessary code) to make connections. But in recent years a small family of flexible formats, powerful computer programs and flexible online data sources have brought everything together.
This chart seems terribly complicated at first, but it will be explained during the course. Fortunately, you will be working within a relatively restricted part of the whole schema.
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3. Preparation for the Exercises
You will become hopelessly lost within the short span of this course (1 or 2 weeks) and even in your own personal data collections, unless you adopt good data management practices. We strongly recommend the constant use of these elements:
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4. Wind & Wave Products
This group includes both modeled and measured (by satellite) winds and waves. These topics were covered by the first Operational Oceanography workshop hosted by the OceanTeacher Academy, in 2009. The author promised then to write the exercises you see here, and has kept them available and updated ever since. As far as possible, older "download" methods have been replaced with state-of-the-art THREDDS or OPeNDAP direct connection methods for rapid data access without visualizing unnecessary locations and times in the original products. |
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5. Satellite Data for Temperature (SST), Optics/Color, Salinity (SSS), Ice, Surface Height (SSH), Visible Imagery, Productivity and Currents
SCALARS ONLY: All of these parameters are scalar quantities (although there are some ice motion products published by most international ice monitoring centers) from satellites.
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6. Profile and Trajectory Data from Drifters (Argo) and Buoys (GDP)
The constant presence of over 1000 surface drifters (Global Drifter Program/GDP) and 3000 Program Argo profiling floats (both types having S, T and other parameter sensors) is like having an enormous fleet of oceanographic ships constantly surveying the earth's seas. All the data from these platforms are being received, managed and delivered to us through rapid dissemination systems. These exercises can access the resulting data:
At present, the largest body of marine data in global archives is already from these programs, outstripping traditional sources such as ocean cruises. Marine scientists have to learn more about these data and use them effectively, ASAP. |
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7. Scalars & Vectors from Ocean Models
Ocean models range over all spatial scales, from ponds to the world ocean, many involving the assimilation of near-real-time data to drive and/or nudge the model calculations toward truth.
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8. Parallel Use of Google Earth for Visualization
Google Earth (GE) is an extremely popular platform for data display, and even personal data discovery due to its global imagery capability. Many scientists might not think hihgly of it, but it has become an essential part of the earth science process.
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