Data Access for the Southeast US Coasts and Oceans: The SECOORA Data Portal and Hurricane-Specific Service Offerings

The Southeast Coastal Ocean Observing Regional Association (SECOORA) aggregates data from a multitude of sources including coastal stations , buoys, biological field observations, high-frequency radar, gliders, satellites, and more — all operated by a wide variety of federal and nonfederal organizations and researchers. These data are accessed and made discoverable, compatible, and available through an end-to-end data management system that supports stakeholders in the coast and ocean science and management communities.

The SECOORA Data Portal [portal.secoora.org], developed in cooperation with Axiom Data Science, integrates and visualizes hundreds of data layers from real-time and historical sources across the region. Users can custom dashboards and chart data to quickly compare selected data parameters and model extractions to spotlight environmental events or geographic locations of interest. The portal also provides its own services for the aggregated data streams through ERDDAP, which supports CSV, OPeNDAP, GeoJSON, NetCDF, and other mechanisms for data download.

SECOORA recently released the Eyes on the Storm hurricane tool to support users who need access to vital real-time data during an extratropical event.. This thematic portal provides access to real-time weather information (such as wind speed and wave heights) from ocean and coastal stations, satellite observations and model forecasts within 50 miles of an active storm’s path. . The product features a map based view where users can easily follow the storm track and weather information geospatially and a more detailed station view providing real-time and historic data for specific locations. The tool also hosts legacy versions of storm data to provide users with an aggregated history of past hurricane events.