NOAA

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is an agency in the Department of Commerce, U.S.A, that maps the oceans and conserves their living resources; predicts changes to the earth's environment; provides weather reports and forecasts floods and hurricanes and other natural disasters related to weather.

NASA

National Aeronautics and was established on 1958 by the National Aeronautics and Space Act is the agency responsible for the public space program of the United States of America. It is also responsible for long-term civilian and military aerospace research.

POES

Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites (POES) is a satellite system used to monitor global environmental conditions, and collect and disseminate data related to: weather, atmosphere, oceans, land and near-space environment. The POES satellite system offers the advantage of daily global coverage, by making nearly polar orbits roughly 14.1 times daily. The POES system includes the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and the Tiros Operational Vertical Sounder (TOVS).

CEOSR

Centre for Earth and Space Research (CEOSR) at George Mason University provides a focus for research done from satellite platforms, including data, associated information technologies and applications as well as fundamental science.

GMU

George Mason University (GMU).

AVHRR

The Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data set is comprised of data collected by the AVHRR sensor and held in the archives of the U.S. Geological Survey`s EROS Data Center. Carried aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration`s (NOAA) Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite series, the AVHRR sensor is a broad-band, 4- or 5-channel scanning radiometer, sensing in the visible, near-infrared, and thermal infrared portions of the electromagnetic spectrum.

HRPT

High Rate Picture Transmission (HRPT) service installed on the NOAA satellites has for some two decades been the main source of high quality data from polar orbiting meteorological satellites at major user stations throughout the world. Through HRPT reception the user site can acquire data from three or more consecutive overpasses twice each day from each satellite, giving high resolution data coverage of a region extending to about 1500 km radius from the user station.

Quorum

Quorum Communications, Inc. (http://www.qcom.com/index.html) provides satellite microwave receivers,downconverters, antenna systems, and communications products to OEM and end users worldwide.

IDL

Interactive Data Language (IDL) an interpreted programming language from Research Systems, Inc.,Boulder, CO (www.rsinc.com) that runs on Windows, Mac and various Unix platforms and is very popular among scientific community.

ENVI

The Environment for Visualizing Images (ENVI) is a robust easy-to-use image processing system that provides analysis and visualization of single band, multispectral, hyperspectral and radar remote sensing data. It also has the capability to work with vector data and perform basic GIS functionality. ENVI is built on IDL, an array-based interactive 4th generation language (4GL).

RSI

Research Systems (RSI) a wholly owned subsidiary of ITT Industries, provides integrated software solutions that help scientists, engineers, researchers and medical professionals turn complex data into useful information. RSI's 150,000 customers from over 80 countries use IDL, ENVI and IAS to analyze data and imagery and deploy imaging applications.

SST

Sea Surface Temperature (SST) is the water temperature at the surface. In practical terms, the exact meaning of "surface" will vary according to the measurement method used. A satellite radiometer "sees" a skin temperature representing the top millimeter; a thermometer in the ocean would see approximately the top 1 meter below the sea surface; the measurements routinely made from ships are often from the engine water intakes and may be 5m below the surface.

NDVI

Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is a non-linear transformation of the visible (red) and near-infrared bands of satellite information. NDVI is defined as the difference between the visible (red) and near-infrared (NIR) bands, over their sum. The NDVI is an alternative measure of vegetation amount and condition.

BMP

Bitmapped (BMP) is Windows' native bitmapped graphics file format. The BMP format comes in 1-, 4-,8- and 24-bit color options that provide 2, 16, 256 and 16 million colors respectively. BMP files use the .BMP or .DIB file extensions (DIB stands for Device-Independent Bitmap).

JPEG

Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) is a commonly used standard method of lossy compression for photographic images. The file format which employs this compression is commonly also called JPEG;the most common file extensions for this format are .jpeg, .jfif, .jpg, .JPG, or .JPE, although .jpg is the most common on all platforms.