Reformatted SEASAT Data and Improved Tools at PO.DAAC

The Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC) is NASA’s data center responsible for data management and distribution of satellite oceanographic data, as well as providing support for its scientific user base. PO.DAAC’s data holdings relevant to OST include sea surface height and significant wave height from TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, OSTM/Jason-2, and gravity measurements from GRACE. PO.DAAC also archives data from Seasat, NASA’s first oceanographic satellite mission that lasted 90 days during 1978. In honor of Seasat’s 35th anniversary PO.DAAC has reformatted the flat binary Seasat data into easy to read data records in NetCDF format. This includes the altimeter (ALT), scatterometer (SASS), and microwave radiometer (SMMR) data. All of the reformatted data will be available via anonymous ftp from PO.DAAC.

PO.DAAC continues to provide users with improved abilities to access and visualize its data holdings by updating several current tools, and developing new ones. Most users are familiar with PO.DAAC’s State Of The Ocean (SOTO) that utilizes Google Earth. There is now a 2-D, flat map version with the same functionality as the Google Earth based SOTO, so users now have a choice of a 3-D globe or a 2-D map. There have been several improvements to our subsetting tools. The old subsetter, POET, has been retired, but its functionality still exists in a swath subsetter, HiTide, and a gridded subsetter, LAS. HiTide has been given a sleaker welcome page so the layout is more intuitive to first time users. PO.DAAC has continually been adding more datasets into LAS, including OSCAR and the reconstructed sea level anomalies from Hamlington et. al. The webpage has been given a minor facelift so it is not as cluttered and information regarding datasets and/or missions are more obvious.