Four Oshen C-Stars departing St. Thomas on the back of a deployment vessel for future observations of Atlantic hurricanes. Credit: Oshen
As the 2025 hurricane season ramps up, NOAA will be testing small, uncrewed instrumented sailboats built by a robotics company to capture weather and ocean data in the path of tropical storms. The observations from these robots will help scientists understand how hurricanes do or don't intensify, which helps meteorologists provide better hurricane forecasts.
NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory will be playing a critical role in the mission. Its Science Data Integration Group (SDIG) receives data from NOAA-contracted Uncrewed Surface Vehicles. With support from NOAA's Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program, and Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, SDIG invented and custom-built automated processes that receive data, assess data integrity, and distribute data within minutes on the World Meteorological Organization's (WMO's) Global Telecommunications System (GTS) for use by NOAA and global operational weather forecast centers.
That's just one of the key services developed by PMEL's SDIG. This group is the foundation of PMEL's data management capacity, responsible for the comprehensive management, processing, curation, and dissemination of a vast array of environmental data. Data from ocean and atmospheric measurements are a strategic asset that underpins all of NOAA's products and services, guiding everything from daily weather forecasts to climate predictions and ecosystem management.
The C-Star is a four-foot long, wind- and solar-powered instrumented uncrewed surface vessel built by the British company Oshen. Light and cost effective, the C-Stars transmit data from sensors that measure wind speed and direction, sea surface temperature, air temperature, air pressure and relative humidity. A fleet of five C-Stars will join satellites, Hurricane Hunters and a diverse array of uncrewed airborne and marine systems in gathering vast quantities of data about oceanic and atmospheric conditions to feed into weather models that will help improve hurricane research and forecasting.
SDIG's job is to ensure the integrity, accessibility and long-term stewardship of taxpayer-funded scientific data collected by NOAA researchers. That starts by collaborating with scientific teams to receive unprocessed data from various observational platforms, including moorings, drifting buoys, autonomous surface and underwater vehicles, and research vessels.
Next, data must be processed and assessed for accuracy. Metadata records—information about the data, such as what type of sensor was used to collect it—is essential for the data's retrieval, analysis and preservation, and must be created and maintained. The data are made available to the scientific community, policymakers and the public, via web portals, software interfaces, and in many cases working with users directly to ensure easy access and effective use of the data.
Data are also archived in trusted national and international repositories, like NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information.
Data from roboting observing platforms, such as C-Star, are received through communication pathways that differ from the normal 1,140 data sets PMEL receives every day via satellite. In 2024, PMEL systems processed more than 26 thousand discrete data deliveries with more than 2 million data records. Each data record contains between 20 and 35 measurements that are verified and distributed to research and operational end users who use the data to provide valuable forecasts and research results to benefit the public.
"All this adds up to petabytes of data—that’s millions of gigabytes," said PMEL director Michelle McClure. "Ensuring that these data are not only high quality, but also easy to use is a tremendous service that PMEL's data managers play that most take for granted."