GHRSST-PP Regional Data Assembly Centres ( RDAC )
GHRSST-PP RDAC serve regional and national communities by processing satellite and in situ SST data according to the GHRSST-PP Data Processing Specification. RDACs deliver GHRSST-PP data products in near real time for ingestion into the GHRSST-PP R/GTS
Each RDAC has responsibility for one or a relatively small number of satellite sensors. For example, the US Naval Oceanographic Office RDAC produces global L2P AVHRR SSTs and a global L4 analysis product that incorporates in situ data. The European RDAC (the Medspiration project: http://www.medspiration.org), produces real time L2P SST products from the ENVISAT Advanced Along Track Scanning Radiometer (AATSR) and SEVIRI sensors, a regional high resolution Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRS) product and an ultra-high resolution (~2km) analysis product for the Mediterranean Sea. Another RDAC, generating L2P products from microwave radiometers such as the Tropical Rainfall Mapping Mission TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) and Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer - Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) is operating at Remote Sensing Systems, Inc. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) operate another RDAC in collaboration with the University of Tohoku (see http://www.ocean.caos.tohoku.ac.jp/~merge/sstbinary/actvalbm.cgi) providing both regional and global observations and L4 analysis products and L2P products from AMSR-E. The GHRSST-PP also has RDAC services at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (the BLUElink> project: http://www.cmar.csiro.au/bluelink) providing Australian coverage L2P and L4 data, at the NOAA Office of Satellite Data Processing and Distribution (OSDPD) providing GOES-E and GOES-W L2P data and at the NOAA National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) providing L4 analyses. The PO.DAAC at NASA-JPL, in collaboration with NASA's Ocean Biology Processing Group and the University of Miami are also serving as the RDAC for MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data. All products are available from the RDAC itself and form the GHRSST-PP GDAC (http://ghrsst.jpl.nasa.gov)
Several RDAC systems implement an active user consultation process in order to provide the best possible service to the user community. A GHRSST-PP user support office has been configured at the GDAC facility and provides services to work with the user community and resolve any issues they may raise regarding GHRSST-PP and their specific application. A 6-monthly user consultation workshop is held by the Medspiration project that provides a forum in which user communities can feed-back their experience and requirements to the European RDAC teams. Users from operational ocean and NWP systems are represented and the Medspiration service has been modified to suit their requirements several times. Within the MISST RDAC project, a number of key users are engaged at all levels of the project in order to 'pull through' the scientific developments within the GHRSST-PP and to demonstrate the benefit of high-resolution SST data products in ocean forecasting and hurricane prediction. User consultation and feedback are essential elements of the GHRSST-PP and regular interaction with user communities lies at the heart of successfully implementing the GHRSST-PP.
(Last Updated: 12-04-2007)