NASA has created an online tool called “State of the Ocean”. This tool displays an interactive map of the world’s oceans populated with data collected from satellites. Users can select which data is being presented on the map to learn about variables like temperature, currents, and salinity. For variables with years of data collection, users can select specific date ranges to view change in one variable in a particular time frame. For example, if I wanted to observe changes in surface temperature off the coast of Vietnam between 2012 and 2014, I could easily do so and even create an animation so the map will visually change. This tool is useful for oceanographers who use this data and it’s fun to use.
Geography 250
Emilie – This is such a great find! Thanks so much for sharing it. Combining the remote sensing with hydrosphere makes for some very cool visualizations. I love the Chlorophyll viewer. You can see where the greatest primary production on the planet is occurring at any given time. The SST anomaly one is depressing though. It is so much warmer at the poles…
This is such a cool website! Its interesting to see how the colors on the map represent vast chlorophyll and temperature changes throughout Earth’s oceans. When clicking on the sea surface temperature it is interesting to note that the Pacific ocean has more red than the Atlantic ocean. This website would have been particularly useful in our unit on the hydrosphere.
This resource is really cool! There are a lot of data sets to explore and I like how you can gain an understanding of particular concepts like salinity or sea temperature in a purely visual manner. In the Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly layer, which compares daily to past average temperatures, you can really see the spatial distribution of unusually warm waters. This resource connects especially well to our study of hydrology and climate change (for some layers).