Satellite Course Information | CoastWatch-West Coast

PREPARING FOR THE COURSE

To get the most out of the course, be ready with a course project and have your computer setup ahead of time with the required software. If you would like to watch the course lectures before the week of the course they are available for you to watch via the links on this page. Please contact Jenn Sevadjian (Jennifer.Sevadjian at noaa.gov) if you have questions about installing software, need ideas for your project, or have other questions about the course .

Class Project

Participants are encouraged to come to the course with a project to work on and the information needed for the project. For example, if a project is to match up tagged animal tracks with satellite data, then track data (a list of dates, latitudes, and longitudes) would be required.

Computers

Attendees must provide their own laptop/device. Although the following software/packages/modules are optional, examples given in this workshop will use each of the software packages listed below and are suggested for completing exercises within the workshop. In the case of non-government software and off-site links, NOAA CoastWatch is not endorsing the product, but providing the link for convenience.

Software

Please install the software well in advance of the course to leave time for addressing installation issues. NOAA employees, contractors, and affiliates using government-issued computers will likely require the approval and assistance of IT administrators to install software.

R and R Studio

The latest version of R Studio is required to participate in the R tutorials and examples presented in the course.

R 4.x is required for the R packages that will be used in the course.
R Script for required modules: R script to test and/or install required modules for workshop exercises.

Python

Python 3 is required to participate in the Python tutorials and examples presented in the course.

Anaconda installations have made it easier to install the required modules.
Miniconda is a light weight version of Anaconda that takes up less disk space. It comes with a minimal set of modules, so you add just what you need.
Jupyter Notebooks in addition to Python 3 will be used for Python exercises.
The following modules are required to complete course exercises:
pyproj, netCDF4, requests, matplotlib, pandas, cartopy, xarray, statsmodels, shapely, and cmocean.

You can run this script in your python environment to check if the modules are install.
If you are using Anaconda or Miniconda, first try installing the modules using the conda-forge channel.
E.g. "conda install -c conda-forge xarray"
If that does not work, try without the conda-forge channel
or with PIP
E.g. "pip install xarray"

ESRI ArcGIS

ArcGIS may also be used in exercises. Users must have their own licensed version of this software in addition to the Data Management Tools Extension.

Please install the Environmental Data Connector (EDC), which is a helpful add-on for ArcGIS that is made available by the CoastWatch West Coast Node and NOAA/SWFSC/ERD.

Panoply

Please install Panoply, a netCDF viewer developed by NASA. Panoply is available for download at: https://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/panoply/
and can be run on Windows, Mac and Linux computers.