RealEarth: Real-time Access to Global Satellite Data and Derived Products

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) has created a web based tool to manage and display a wide variety of remotely sensed data from an ever-increasing collection of sources. The RealEarth environment is based on standard Web Map Service (WMS) protocol to deliver geo-located image views to Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) compliant viewers currently available on a full spectrum of platforms (workstations, laptops, smartphones, etc.). Users can manipulate the local display through a set of controls for positioning, layering, transparency, animation, and zoom factor. Compliance to standard protocols and formats ensures seamless integration of local and remotely produced geo-spatial products spanning various temporal, spatial and spectral scales from a range of scientific disciplines.

The product suite currently contains over 300 layers, many of which are derived from geostationary and polar satellite data (e.g. GOES, Himawari-8 AHI, Suomi-NPP VIIRS, Terra/Aqua MODIS and Landsat8). These data are hosted on a collection of local and remote instances of the RealEarth environment which can provide full feature web map services in a standalone or networked architecture.

SSEC has developed apps for iOS- and Android-based mobile devices. The apps, WxSat and RealEarth, leverage the RealEarth WMS to provide access to the very same product selection available through the Web based user interface.

We will report on the status of the RealEarth environment for access to real-time and archive satellite data, and the WxSat and RealEarth apps.