Hazardous Weather Conference Participants:

There is a rich resource of free information available to all teachers who have access to the Internet. Much of the data are real-time and extremely useful for the classroom. The following are 13 of the Internet sites that I use to analyze ocean features for the Gulf Stream analyses and Gulf of Mexico analyses:

1. Ocean Remote Sensing - The John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Best source of Gulf Stream info. (real-time, six areas).
2. Rutgers University Institute of Marine & Coastal Sciences. Second best source of imagery! Real-time color imagery of the East Coast and Great Lakes.
3. Interactive Marine Observations. Fixed buoys; click on a buoy to access sea surface temperature as well as sea state info. and meteorological info. Provides ground truth observations which are especially useful when clouds obscure the sea surface.
4. Current Velocities of the Gulf Stream. Estimated current velocities map, East Coast of US (color, one week old).
5. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute - North Atlantic Satellite AVHRR.
6. Miami University RSMAS US East Coast HRPT SST IR Image. False color imagery of East Coast (delayed two-three days, slightly degraded).
7. GOES East IR, Purdue University. Real-time full-disk infrared, black & white.
8. Bermuda Biological Station for Research. Real-time imagery, East Coast.
9. Sea Surface Temperature Satellite Image Archive - The University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography. Low resolution, huge area, one to two days old, color.
10. NOAA Experimental SST Contour Charts. 14 and 50 km resolution color imagery of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
11. NAVO Product Support. Naval Oceanographic Office analysis, low resolution, real-time. Good to compare with raw infrared imagery.
12. Global Near-Real-Time Altimeter Data Home Page - Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research. Altimetry data (sea heights), near-real-time, worldwide.
13. Daily Swaths - Earth Scan Laboratory, Louisiana State University. Real-time, low resolution, color and black & white.

I download images from each of these sites and analyze them using Adobe Photoshop software. My final products are a combination of the interpretation from all the infrared imagery (black and white as well as false color).

In the classroom, I recommend a student activity in which you print out some of the Gulf Stream and Gulf of Mexico images from Johns Hopkins University and Rutgers University. Have the students try to draw in the Gulf Stream, clockwise circulating warm eddies, counterclockwise circulating cold eddies, and sea surface temperatures (convert to degrees F). You can use the Navy Ocean Features Analysis (OFA) for comparison. Then have them determine current velocity estimates from item number 4 above. Also use the Univ. of Colorado altimetry (sea height) information from number 12 to confirm the existence of warm and cold eddies. Then have the students interrogate the buoys for sea surface temperature ground truth comparisons.

If you have the students do this activity regularly, you can see how the eddies move slowly to the west and southwest while the Gulf Stream moves to the east. You can also track seasonal cooling or heating by watching the surface temperatures rise or fall. The buoy data also gives meteorological information, so the students can track how the air temperature effects the ocean temperatures: cool air temperatures eventually produce cooler sea surface temperatures, and vice-versa. If you have any questions or difficulties, call me at 301-952-0930, and I will walk you through the process step-by-step!

Rutgers and Johns Hopkins University as well as the other university sites all appreciate a letter, call, or e-mail, telling them how useful and important their Web sites are to you. That way we can insure that the universities keep this valuable information online for teachers. Two private fishing companies are trying to stop the universities from posting real-time data so your input is vital to the continued existence of these extremely critical sources of free information. I have my own private oceanographic company, but I use the Internet for sources of imagery to analyze and create my high resolution Gulf Stream Analyses and Gulf of Mexico Analyses.

I invite you to visit my Web site at the following URL: http://www.erols.com/gulfstrm/

(The next page is a sample of my North Panel Gulf Stream Analysis in black and white. The Web page shows a North Panel sample in color.) You can also send me e-mail at: gulfstrm@erols.com. I look forward to hearing from you in the future and to participating in next year's Hazardous Weather Conference! Remember, you can call me anytime at 301-952-0930.

Jenifer Clark, Satellite Oceanographer