NOAA CoastWatch produces near real-time ocean color products from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on-board the NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) Terra and Aqua satellites. The global Rate Buffered Data (raw satellite data or RBD) are obtained from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). NOAA processes the RBD to Level 0 datasets, then to Level 1A radiances, and then to Level 1B calibrated, geolocated radiances. CoastWatch produces derived geophysical products (Level 2) from the calibrated Level 1B radiances using the NASA SeaDAS software. These products are then mapped (Level 3) to the CoastWatch geographic regions.

Products generated by NOAA are of operational quality and will likely differ from the same product generated by NASA. Due to the constraint imposed on near-real time generation, NOAA uses forecast ancillary data from the Global Forecast System (GFS) and predicted ephemerides. These ancillary data are different than those used in production of the NASA science products, but the resulting products show good agreement with respect to patterns and gradients which are important for operational applications. Additionally, although NOAA strives to implement the most recent versions of the MODIS calibration tables and software on its near-real time processing system, it cannot always achieve this objective and may be running a different version than that implemented on NASA's science processing system. Science quality MODIS ocean color products are available from NASA's Ocean Biology Processing Group.

CoastWatch makes available chlorophyll products using both the standard algorithm (OC3) and a regionally tuned algorithm for Chesapeake Bay (Werdell, P. Jeremy, et. al., Approach for the long-term spatial and temporal evaluation of ocean color satellite data products in a coastal environment, Proc. Of SPIE Vol. 6680, 66800G, 2007).