NOAA CoastWatch products are produced and distributed either by Central Operations or Regional Nodes. Regional products available through regional nodes are tailored for specific applications or regional interpretation. Products produced centrally are categorized as experimental or operational within NESDIS. Operational products are regularly produced and usually have a timeliness requirement whereas experimental products may change without advance notice. In addition, products are produced with differents levels of quality that are coupled closely with timeliness. The table below describes these differences.

One goal of the CoastWatch Program is to make access and use of satellite oceanographic data products easy. Products from various spacecraft are processed and distributed in a common formats through multiple distribution protocols (HTTP, FTP, THREDDS). The CoastWatch Hierarchical Data Format (CW HDF), NetCDF, Geo-Tagged Image File Format (GeoTIFF), Portable Network Graphics (PNG), and ShapeFiles (where appropriate) are used to meet most users' needs. Software provided by NOAA CoastWatch assists in rendering these formats and more as well as visualization and analysis with the CoastWatch Data Analysis Tool (CDAT).

Additional information about CoastWatch products are provided in the links below:

Near Real-time:
• Ocean Color (Chlorophyll-a, nLw, visible, turbidity, etc)
• Sea Surface Temperature
• Ocean Surface Winds

Delayed/Science Quality:
• VIIRS Ocean Color Level-2 (Chlorophyll-a, nLw, visible, turbidity, etc)
• NOAA ACSPO Level 2P Global Sub-skin SST from AVHRR Level-2 GAC

Most of the CoastWatch products are Level-3 or mapped products. Regions are predefined and satellite data that covers a selected region are processed and mapped to the region's coverage. All CoastWatch searches are in terms of a given region. Once a region is selected, multiple criteria can then be selected to refine the search.