Abstract NOAA's nowCOAST (http://nowcoast.noaa.gov) is a GIS-based web mapping portal providing integrated, one-stop access to on-line, real-time coastal environmental observations and NOAA forecasts for any region in the coastal United States. NowCOAST provides users with displays of the latest surface weather and ocean observations, satellite cloud imagery, weather radar reflectivity mosaics, sea surface temperature analyses and gridded forecasts. It also supplies geo-referenced hyperlinks to thousands of web sites providing current observations from meteorological, oceanographic, river, and water quality observing networks and NOAA forecast products from the top of the watershed to the high seas. NowCOAST is designed to be a planning aid to assist recreational and commercial mariners, coastal managers, HAZMAT responders, coastal ocean modelers and marine educators to discover and display real-time information for their particular needs and geographic area of interest. Thus, nowCOAST supports the NOAA Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) Program's vision "to provide continuous, integrated data on our open oceans, coastal waters, and Great Lakes...to support the information needs of government, environmental managers, scientists, business and the public." Updated at regular intervals throughout the day, nowCOAST has the ability to display near real-time meteorological and oceanographic surface observations across the continental United States as well as across the world. When turned on, nowCOAST's surface observations, obtained from NESDIS and MADIS, are plotted directly on the map at the geo-referenced location of the observation point. In addition to these observations, near real-time imagery is also displayed on the map viewer. Both Infrared and Visible Satellite Imagery (obtained from NESDIS) are displayed on nowCOAST, as well as the NWS' RIDGE Weather Radar Mosaic, which shows base reflectivity of precipitation. An on-map visualization is also available that shows a mosaic of NCEP's Sea Surface Temperature Analysis. Recently, gridded forecast fields obtained from the National Digital Forecast Database have also been added. Forecasts out to three days are available for Maximum Temperature, Minimum Temperature, Wind Speed & Direction, Significant Wave Height and Quantitative Precipitation Amount. The portal also includes hyperlinks to meteorological, oceanographic, and river observations from in-situ and remote-sensing platforms from observing networks operated by federal and state agencies and regional ocean observing systems. These networks include but are not limited to airway stations, climate reference stations, fixed buoys, coastal platforms, river gages, Doppler weather radars, high frequency current radars, radiosondes, and wind profilers. The forecast products that nowCOAST links to include 1) forecast "guidance" from NOAA's computer-based estuarine, oceanographic, river, and weather prediction models and 2) worded marine weather and general weather forecasts for geographic areas. In addition, the portal includes links to NOAA's astronomical tidal predictions for sites along the coast. The portal interface allows users to quickly create a "clickable" map of real-time observing or forecast sites via four "pull-down" menus. An user can specify location (i.e. estuary, seaport, coastal region, or lake), 2) type of observation of forecast, 3) variable, and 4) time. Once the map appears, the user can simply click on the observation or forecast site to display the information or use a variety of map tools to zoom in/out, select, pan, identify, or query. Users can also overlay different types of observation and forecast map layers on a single map.
Web site owner: Office of Coast Survey