Remote Sensing Tutorial: Sea Surface Temperature

NOAA's Coral Reef Watch Program offers a remote sensing tutorial that describes how NOAA satellites are used to measure sea surface temperature (SST) and thus identify areas at risk for coral bleaching around the globe. The instrument used by Coral Reef Watch is called Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and it measures infrared radiation being emitted from the Earth's surfaces including its oceans.

Alignment to NC Essential Standards  (grades 9-12)
Bio2.1.3 (mutualism between corals and symbiotic zooxantheallae)
Bio2.2.1
EEn.1.1.4
EEn2.3.1
EEn.2.6.4 
Phy2.2
Psc.3.2

State of the Ocean and Google Earth

The State of the Ocean is an online tool from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC) that provides near real-time visualization data (most recent 10 days) about ocean features as well as storm events and displays it in Google Earth!

Users can select to view recent data for the following ocean features: sea surface temperature (SST), SST anomaly, chlorophyll, ocean wind speed and wind direction, sea surface height anomaly, ocean surface current speed and direction, and MODIS true color.  Users can select to create a url to share the resulting visualization with others.

This is also a neat tool for tracking tropical storms and hurricanes around the globe!

The PO.DAAC website also contains links to other multimedia resources such as animations and images.

Alignment to NC Essential Standards  (grades 9-12)
EEn.2.3.1
EEn.2.5.3
EEn.2.6.4

Coral Reef Watch Satellite Monitoring from NOAA

According to NOAA, the Coral Reef Watch mission is to "utilize remote sensing and in situ tools for near-real-time and long term monitoring, modeling and reporting of physical environmental conditions of coral reef ecosystems."  The Coral Reef Watch website provides data for the following monitoring products along with a tutorial describing how to use these products:
Bleaching Alert Area
Degree Heating Weeks (DHW)
HotSpots
Sea Surface Temperature (SST)
SST Anomaly
Virtual Stations

Google Earth can also be used to view NOAA's Coral Reef Watch's satellite monitoring products.

An 8-minute video of a Science on a Sphere program about coral bleaching that describes what NOAA is doing to monitor and prevent bleaching is also available along with other education and outreach resources.

Alignment to NC Essential Standards  (grades 9-12)
Bio2.1.3 (mutualism between corals and symbiotic zooxantheallae)
Bio2.2.1
EEn.2.6.4 

My NASA Data Lesson: Coral Bleaching in the Caribbean

Coral Bleaching in the Caribbean is a teacher-derived lesson available from My NASA Data which is a web-based resource designed with educators in mind. In this 50-minute activity, students use satellite data to determine when the sea surface temperature (SST) meets the criteria to induce coral bleaching. During late 2005, a major coral bleaching event occurred in the Caribbean Sea. Students collect SST data (time series plot) from the MY NASA DATA Live Access Server (LAS) to explore this event. The time series data can also be correlated with map analysis (see figure on above). The lesson includes easy to follow steps for accessing data from LAS as well as a teacher answer key (pdf).

If you have never used LAS, this is a great way to get familiar with how to use this resource as data sets are available for the following topics:
        Atmosphere
        Atmospheric Radiation
        Biosphere   
        Cryosphere   
        Land Surface
        Oceans   
        Surface Meteorology and Solar Energy


Alignment to NC Essential Standards  (grades 9-12)
Bio2.1.3 (mutualism between corals and symbiotic zooxantheallae)
Bio2.2.1
EEn.2.6.4