I know that a lot of the TUNA-holics around here subscribe to sites like Terrafin (myself included) for the latest in SST data during Tuna season. I just found a very interesting article posted by a gentleman on the
Bay Area Tuna Club to our south.
Most all of us here know about and use CoastWatch also for SST's. But did you know that there is a very useful tool on CoastWatch that can give you images showing lat/lon and temp wherever you move your mouse pointer. You can zoom in on spots and really find those temp edges.
Here is the article. I will only make changes to the file names as they apply to the Oregon coast rather than the Central CA coast area. Otherwise the rest is unedited:
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This may be old hat for some of you, but i thought it may help others.
the NOAA stelite sea surface temp link
http://coastwatch.pfel.noaa.gov/data.html scroll down this page till you see an icon of an eye on the left side of the page, click on it. now you should see a satelite shot of the whole of the west coast. move your pointer over exactly over monterey bay and click on it. if our section of the coast is under cloud cover, dont worry. there are fast foreward/rewind buttons at the bottom of the page. click on rewind and the previous shot will come up (usually from a few hours earlier) do this until you see a shot with our part of the coast clear(like this one click exactly on mtry bay or half moon bay. now a zoomed in area from bodega to below pt sur, like this one
http://coastwatch.pfel.noaa.gov/cgi-..._n16_wc_d7.cwf you will notice the temp scale on the left is in centagrade...dont despair, at the bottom of the page is an icon of a scissors with the words "customize preview", click on it . a page will appear wit fields you can fill in. in DATA: MIN type "55", in MAX type "64". in UNITS click FARENHEIT(very important, otherwise youll get a solid red map). then hit SUBMIT. now youll have a tuna friendly map.
If you are agile on a computer, you can download a small program from their site by clicking on the software link on the first page i provide in the email.get the "CDAT: CoastWatch Data Analysis Tool". follow the insaallation instructions and remember to get the"DLL's" if you are on a windows machine. this little app is soooo cool. it allows you to move your mouse cursor over the map and at the bottom it gives you a readout of the exact long/lat and the temprature at that point!. to get files for this app to read, on that first coastwatch page Ill give you in the email, click on the 'Processed Data Directory'. scroll down this looooong page till near the bottom of the page( 4 or 5 lines from the bottom)you will see the most recent date. click on the link 9 lotsa numbers in blue)just to the left of it.This will take you to another page with a loooong list of files. on the central coast we are only interested in a few of them for SST's. the filenaming is a little complecated. the only ones we are looking for are named like this "2003_260_2133_n16_wo_d7.cwf" The _wo_ reffers to 'Westcoast Oregon'. the last 2 letters/numbers (d7) refers to the sensor used for SST's. were only interested in files with 'd7'(Daytime shot/ sensor 7) or s7 (nighttime shot/ sensor 7) or 'm5'. d7 and s7 will show cloud cover masked in black. 'm5' uses formula to compensate for cloud/fog cover(as far as i can figure out, Dave, you may be able to explain this one better). it can be less accurate, but will give an idea of whats going on under the cover. Dont use the other sensors, thell show cloud cover as cold water and be inaccurate.You can download these small files or simply get the softeare to open them from the web.the firs time you try and open one of these files from the web you may get a ' cant open ******.cwf, choose an application to open this file'. Simply browse to where you have the coastwatch software on your computer( proabably in the Programs file) and choose it. when you first load a map it wont look like anything until you click on the 'NORMALIZE'button in the sidebar.then in the 'TOOL PANEL'bar at the top of the window, click on the 2nd button. the side pannel will change. now in the sidepannel click the icon that looks like a grid and a little further down, click the little square button to the left of the words 'Bit 3-geography. this will overlay a lat/long grid and coastline outline. move your mouse cursor over the map and notice the lat/long and temp reading for where your pointer is at at the bottom of the window...
Happy hunting..
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While I've known about the first part, I wasn't aware about the extra CDat tool. I downloaded it, and find that it could be very useful, especially for anyone who does not subscribe to sites such as
www.terrafin.com
It's a little late in the year to be of a whole lot of help this year, but by next year I expect ya'll to be pros!
Sea Jypzee
SST Image files
Linear Mode
