Collaborators

Five institutions and their facilities are critical to the project:

• The NOAA/NESDIS Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry (Bob Cheney) is an established facility for operational altimeter data processing for NOAA. They will provide the timely access to the altimeter IGDR data sets, plus any necessary altimeter error correction and data processing. The proposed end-product surface current processing and data center will be located here as well.

• The University of South Florida Department of Marine Science is where Gary Mitchum is a faculty professor and has been PI on the on-going NASA-funded Topex/Poseidon research through which the altimeter gridding analysis and the surface current analyses have been developed. They will extend the gridding analysis to include multiple altimeters and provide routine surface height fields.

• The Florida State University(FSU), Center for Ocean and Atmosphere Prediction Studies (COAPS) has a long standing legacy of providing gridded ocean wind data to the research community using both conventional ship and satellite based data. M. Bourassa is leading the effort for processing scatterometer winds.

• Earth and Space Research (ESR) is the site where the work is on-going to develop and improve the models and algorithms for computing surface velocities, distribute data to colleagues, and provide the pilot monthly analyses to Climate Diagnostics Bulletin. G.Lagerloef is the project PI and oversees the development of the pilot system for routine production of the surface current data and distribution.

• The NOAA Hawaii CoastWatch node serves a wide audience of maritime users in the Pacific. This existing NOAA facility will be key to communication, education and accessibility for the surface current data.

• The Naval Research Laboratory in Mississippi has a strong program in satellite oceanography and works with the Naval Oceanographic Office to provide near-real time, global ocean analyses and forecasts based on all available altimeters.

• The National Centers for Environmental Prediction (Vern Kousky) delivers national and global weather, water, climate and space weather guidance, forecasts, warnings and analyses to its Partners and External User Communities.

• The NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (Willa Zhu and Nancy Soreide) developed the OSCAR website.