|
|
|
Software & Tools
CoastWatch provides both software and
online tools for
visualization and analysis of satellite data. Most CoastWatch data is
in a format called CoastWatch-HDF that is slightly modified from the
Hierachical Data Format (HDF).
HDF is a scientific data format specially
designed to handle large multidimensional datasets with direct access
to specific parts of the file without having to parse the entire file.
CoastWatch-HDF is a variation of HDF-4, so many HDF-4 readers can also
read CoastWatch-HDF.
Software
The CoastWatch Software Library and Utilities is a free software package
for working with CoastWatch satellite data in CoastWatch-HDF format.
The utilities allow data users to easily manipulate and visualize satellite
data. The utilities are composed of both graphical and command-line tools:
- CoastWatch Data Analysis Tool (CDAT) is a graphical interface
to many data manipulation and visualization functions.
- CoastWatch Utilities Library is a software library of functions
that are operated from the command line. With scripts or other programs,
the library functions can preform batch processing on many files. Here is
a sampling of major functions:
- Render data and legends to PNG, JPEG, and GeoTIFF images.
- Export data to raw binary, text, or ArcGIS grid files.
- Perform data sampling at discrete Earth locations
(e.g. for comparing satellite data with in-situ data).
- Combine multiple data files into one composite file for
any time-step (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.).
- Calculate data statistics: min, max, mean, standard deviation,
for any file or geographic subregion.
- Perform generic math operations, including cloud masking.
- Perform satellite data georegistration to a variety of Earth projections.
- Manually apply navigational corrections.
- Obtain information on file attributes, dimensions, and variables.
|

CoastWatch Data Analysis Tool
|
Both CDAT and the Utilities Library are available in the same package,
and can be downloaded for installation on Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris and AIX
platforms.
Click here
for more information and for downloading.
Online Tools
Web-based online tools offer quick graphical
visualization and analysis of online data without leaving your
web browser. East Coast Node currently
offers these online tools for selected data offerings:
-
Live Access Server allows a variety of maps, plots and time series
for weekly AVHRR sea surface temperature data for the full east coast or
user-selected subregions.
- CoastWatch Earth Data Access Client
is a variation of the CDAT graphical tool
and allows data browsing and image manipulation for data of the full
east coast region. The
Java 5.0 Update 6 plugin is required.
|

Live Access Server results: weekly AVHRR SST
|
-->
|