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| PO.DAAC | |
|---|---|
| Name | PO.DAAC |
| Type | NASA Distributed Active Archive Center |
| Formed | 1990s |
| Jurisdiction | United States |
| Headquarters | Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
| Parent agency | National Aeronautics and Space Administration |
PO.DAAC
PO.DAAC serves as a thematic data center focused on oceanographic and cryospheric remote sensing, hosted at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It operates within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration framework to archive, distribute, and promote use of satellite-derived observations for science and applications. The center supports researchers, operational agencies, and educators by enabling access to calibrated datasets from missions, sensors, and international programs.
PO.DAAC functions as a NASA Distributed Active Archive Center located at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, affiliated with the California Institute of Technology and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It consolidates missions such as TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, Jason-2, Jason-3, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, and instruments including MODIS, VIIRS, SMAP, ICESat-2 and GRACE. The center supports community activities linked to agencies like NOAA, USGS, EUMETSAT, ESA, and JAXA, and engages stakeholders from institutions such as Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, and CSIRO.
PO.DAAC traces its lineage to NASA archive initiatives in the 1990s associated with missions like TOPEX/Poseidon and later altimetry programs including Jason-1. The center expanded through collaborations with programs such as Earth Observing System and with missions operated by NOAA and ESA. Key developments include integration of products from MODIS on Terra and Aqua, incorporation of interferometric and gravimetric datasets from GRACE and GRACE-FO, and support for lidar datasets from ICESat and ICESat-2. Institutional milestones involved coordination with the National Research Council reviews and alignment with international panels like the Group on Earth Observations.
PO.DAAC’s mission emphasizes stewardship, preservation, and dissemination of satellite-derived oceanographic data to support research in areas championed by entities such as NOAA National Ocean Service, NASA Earth Science Division, and academic centers including Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University. Functional responsibilities include data curation, algorithm provenance tracking, quality assessment aligned with standards from Committee on Earth Observation Satellites, and promoting interoperability with archives like NSIDC, ORNL DAAC, and SEDAC. Outreach functions extend to educational partnerships with museums and programs like California Academy of Sciences and Smithsonian Institution.
PO.DAAC hosts diverse products including sea surface height, sea surface temperature, ocean vector winds, sea ice extent, and ocean color, drawn from missions such as Jason-3, Sentinel-6, MODIS, VIIRS, SMAP, and SMOS. Services comprise searchable catalogs, data subsetting, visualization tools, and APIs compatible with community tools used by researchers at National Center for Atmospheric Research, Princeton University, and University of Washington. The center distributes standard formats used across projects like CF-compliant NetCDF and supports data citation practices promoted by groups such as DataCite and International Oceanographic Commission.
PO.DAAC leverages computational and storage infrastructures at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, integrating cloud resources similar to platforms used by Amazon Web Services research programs and collaborating with federated systems employed by NASA Earthdata. It implements processing pipelines for level-0 to level-4 products, employs software stacks used by projects at California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and supports standards from Open Geospatial Consortium. The center’s infrastructure interoperates with provenance systems and catalogs used by Digital Object Identifier registries and incorporates visualization components akin to those used by Google Earth Engine.
PO.DAAC maintains partnerships with international space agencies including ESA, JAXA, ISRO, and CNES as well as U.S. agencies like NOAA and USGS. It collaborates with academic partners including Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory, University of California, San Diego, and University of Miami to co-produce data products, validation campaigns, and tutorials. Engagements with consortia such as the Group on Earth Observations and Committee on Earth Observation Satellites support interoperability, while ties to projects like Argo and SOCCOM enable in situ validation and blended datasets.
PO.DAAC data underpin research published in journals like Science, Nature, Geophysical Research Letters, and Journal of Geophysical Research. Applications span sea level rise studies used by organizations such as Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change authors, operational oceanography efforts at NOAA National Weather Service, and coastal resilience planning by entities including Federal Emergency Management Agency. Other uses include fisheries management by institutions like National Marine Fisheries Service, climate model evaluation at centers such as NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, and humanitarian planning supported by organizations such as United Nations agencies.
Category:NASA data centers