Naval Oceanographic Office Support of National, State, and Local Satellite Oceanography Education Programs

The Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO) has supported numerous satellite oceanography education programs at the national, state, and local levels over the past year. At the national level, NAVOCEANO supported the Smithsonian Institution's "HoloGlobe" exhibit displayed at the National Museum of Natural Science and currently supports the "Earth Today: A Digital View of Our Dynamic Planet" exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum. For both exhibits, NAVOCEANO contributed over a years worth of daily sea surface temperature (SST) and SST anomaly data collected from NOAA TIROS polar-orbiting satellite's Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer sensor. The SST data were animated in a time-lapse sequence to show the development of the El Nino event in the equatorial Pacific and has been viewed by high school students from around the country. At the state level, NAVOCEANO's satellite oceanography group participated in the Mississippi Educational Television Interactive Video Network's electronic field trip series "From A Distance." This live broadcast program entitled "Observing the Oceans" provided middle and high school students from across the state with an overview of how remotely sensed data are used to study the oceans. At the local level, NAVOCEANO hosted a one-day satellite oceanography seminar for a special group of high school students who were studing remote sensing techniques. The seminar provided remote sensing and oceanography briefs by professional scientists, a tour of the remote sensing and visualization facilities, and a two hour hands-on laboratory exercise using oceanographic data collected by various satellites.