CoastWatch Satellite Course

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The goal of the course is to familiarize NOAA/university researchers, students, resource managers and others with different types of ocean satellite data, different tools, and teach participants how to use satellite data in their own research/work using their choice of software (R, python, ArcGIS/QGIS, Matlab).

Training courses are free and open to anyone and are typically organized over the course of a week or over 4-5 weeks.

The course covers :
- remote sensing basics
- example applications of satellite data
- sea surface temperature
- ocean color (chlorophyll, PAR, Kd490, ....)
- altimetry (sea surface height, currents)
- wind
- salinity
- water quality
- sea ice
- synthetic aperture radar
- which dataset to choose
- overview of different tools and platforms to access data
- various tutorials: NetCDF data, Panoply, ERDDAP, R, Python, ArcGIS, qGIS

(Note: Some basic experience with at least one software is required. Given the length of the course, it will not be possible to teach people R or ArcGIS from scratch for example.)

The courses are a mix of video lectures, self-paced tutorials, live demos, live and forum discussions and "office hours". 

Participants also work on a short personal project to better assimilate the course contents and leave the class with ready to use scripts adapted to your needs.  
All course resources are hosted online and remain publicly available to everyone.

Upcoming Courses:

Mar 31 - Apr 4, 2025: East Coast Satellite Course, Viewing and Analyzing Ocean/Coastal Events and Water Quality

Past courses:

November 2024. Links to an external site. Pacific GIS Remote Sensing Conference (Fiji): Satellite Data Tools & Applications

October 2024. Links to an external site. Satellite Data and the Animal Telemetry Network

October 2024. Links to an external site. PolarWatch Sea Ice Training

March 2024. Week-long course (virtual, targeted towards Micronesia) 

February 2024. Half-day workshop at the OSM meeting (New Orleans, LA)

November 2023. 3-day Operational Satellite Oceanography Workshop (virtual)

November 2023. Half-day workshop at the IOCS meeting (St. Petersburg, FL)

September 2023. 3-day course

June 2023. 1-day workshop at the OSOS3 Symposium (Busan, S. Korea) 

January 2023. 5-week long course

October 2022. Half-day workshop at the Ocean Optics meeting

October 2022. Half-day workshop at the Oceans 2022 meeting

Summer 2022. 4-week long fish-tracking course

September 2022. Half-day workshop at the NOAA Environmental Data Management Workshop

April 2022. Week-long course