Abstract:
NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) has developed a World-Wide Web (WWW)-based visualization and data extraction system. The PMEL server uses HTML forms to provide a point and click front end to the scientific analysis and visualization program FERRET. The server provides access to a large (over 20 gigabytes) research-oriented data base of multi-dimensional, gridded,
... environmental data collected within NOAA and elsewhere. The data base is maintained by the Thermal Modeling and Analysis Project (TMAP) at PMEL.
FERRET is a workstation-based, interactive visualization and analysis system that allows users to explore large and complex gridded data sets. FERRET was originally developed by the TMAP project at PMEL as a tool for analyzing supercomputer results. The project development was funded by the NOAA Equatorial Pacific Ocean Current Study (EPOCS) program.
A partial list of datasets are as follows (see the FERRET Home Page
for updates):
- COADS monthly average surface marine observations (1946-1991)
- Esbensen & Kushnir global ocean surface heat budget
- FSU tropical Pacific wind stress (1961-1992)
- NODC Levitus climatological global ocean atlas
- NGDC ETOPO5 5-minute relief of the surface of the earth
- NMC blended monthly average SST (1982-1992)
- NMC monthly upper air winds and OLR analysis (1968-1988)
- Oberhuber atlas of heat, buoyancy and turbulent kinetic energy
- Rasmussen and Carpenter tropical Pacific El Nino composite analysis
- Sadler tropical Pacific winds (1979-1990)
- US Navy FNOC global 6-hourly surface winds (1982-1992)
Details about the FERRET program are located on the NOAA/PMEL FERRET Home Page:
http://ferret.wrc.noaa.gov/Ferret/
Access to the live data visualization and extraction system is available:
http://ferret.pmel.noaa.gov/Ferret/LAS/home/
Information about NOAA PMEL can be obtained from:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/ 
