The GOES-R coastal waters imager: a new capability for monitoring the coastal ocean

摘要

NOAA is planning to include a hyperspectral Coastal Waters imaging capability (HES-CW) as part of the Hyperspectral Environment Suite (HES) on the next generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-R) to be launched in 2012. The key advantage of a geostationary imager is frequency of revisit. Coastal waters are highly dynamic. Tides, diurnal winds, river runoff, upwelling and storm winds drive currents from one to several knots. Three hour or better sampling is required to resolve these features, and to track red tides, oil spills or other features of concern for coastal environmental management. The HES-CW will image the U.S. coastal waters once every three hours, with a goal of hourly. Additionally, HES-CW can be cued using the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) to image when the area is cloud free, rather than at fixed times set by the orbit for traditional polar orbiting ocean color imagers like SeaWiFS and MODIS. To prepare for HES-CW NOAA has formed the Coastal Ocean Applications and Science Team (COAST). COAST goals are to assure that ocean applications and science requirements are met and to help NOAA prepare for the immediate use of the data when HES-CW is launched. I will describe the HES-CW requirements, current status and the activities of the COAST team.