🎉 Welcome to our second OVL Newsletter!

It is time to bring news about the latest updates and improvements to our OVL web portal and SEAScope application tools in our quarterly newsletter.

We had a busy spring, with the OVL portal going at sea to enrich the student experience during the ESA Ocean training course on board the St. Lehmkuhl and demonstration during several events including the ESA Living Planet Symposium LPS.

We still managed to implement major improvements of the OVL portal and deploy a new SEAScope version.

1 - OVL Portal Updates

It is finally here, we have deployed the capability to get values under cursor when you hover over data

🌟 New Products Added

• Vardyn geostrophic surface current/SSH/SST

• Melodi wave drifters

• OpenMetBuoy OTC25 wave drifters

• SST MTG (lower noise level compared to SST MSG) see: https://seashot.odl.bzh/s/Didn45dlC_k

• SWOT Significant wave height and Wind speed from KaRIn https://odl.bzh/Ug_CQgfG

• SWOT Long swell spectra and swell partitions from KaRIn https://odl.bzh/g7BM0Jap

📈 Product Updates

• SWOT L3 V2 SSH/geostrophic current at 2km for April-June 2025 https://odl.bzh/2UukS-2a

• SWOT L3 250m July/December 2024 (highlighting long swell) https://odl.bzh/uxtF444r

• Note that https://swot-calval.oceandatalab.com and is now redirecting to https://aviso-calval.oceandatalab.com

🚀 New Functionalities and Improvements

• Show the geophysical value at the mouse pointer’s location

• Add wind barbs legend in "Display data" panel

• Many more bug fixes and usability improvements

2 - SEAScope: July 2025 Release

We have just released a new version of SEAScope available here https://seascope.oceandatalab.com/.

🚀 Improvements

• Consistent streamlines length and speed independently of the location on the globe
• Streamlines direction near the poles is fixed

For more information, you can have a look at the post on our website:
https://www.oceandatalab.com/new-version-of-seascope-available_2257568257

3 - Events:

🔱 OTC25 at sea

The second part of the ESA Ocean Training Course 2025 (OTC25) happened at sea during a six weeks voyage from Tromso to Nice, via Reykjavik, aboard the Statsraad Lehmkuhl tall ship. We had a memorable time at sea during the ESA OTC25 voyage across very diverse ocean climate regions. 50 students and 40+ lecturers conducted a variety of oceanographic measurements and scientific activities.

The OVL tools have been used extensively to plan the route and the stations by looking at NRT satellite data. 29 stations were done where the team took samples and measured the physical and chemical properties of water at various depths up to 1200 meters. Using the OVL tools in near real time, Students could leverage satellite, in-situ and model data to explore the physics and biology of the ocean, enhancing their analytical skills and understanding of oceanographic data.

📖 Read more on ESA-EO web stories: Tall ship brings ESA ocean science training to Nice

📖 Detailed journal is available on ESA-EO campaign blog: https://blogs.esa.int/campaignearth/category/esa-ocean-training-course/

📹 Watch the highlight here: https://youtu.be/tNqR3BWoMWo

🔱 LPS25

OVL tools were presented at the Living Planet Symposium 2025 during the D.03.04 session and D.05.05 CDSE meeting. The presentations will be made available on ESA LPS website https://lps25.esa.int/. OVL tools were also demonstrated live on Tuesday and Wednesday at the EO arena.

4 - Check Out Our YouTube Channel

We’ve updated our channel with the presentation of the OVL tools that was done during the first part of the ESA ocean training course (OTC25 OVL tools)

📊 OVL Portal in numbers as of October 2025

• Total Data Available: about 512 TiB
• Number of Products in catalog: 300
• Unique Visitors : 4 833

5 - How to cite

• If you are using a screenshot of the OVL portal in a public presentation or in a publication, we kindly ask you to add the following citation:
  "from OVL portal https://ovl.oceandatalab.com"

  and you can also add a short link of what you are showing in the caption using the "Share" button in the title bar at the top of the OVL portal.
  Additionally, if you are showing some Copernicus Sentinel data, you may need to add:
  "Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data"

• If you are using a screenshot or animation from a SEAShot in a public presentation or in a publication, we kindly ask you to add the following citation:
  "using SEAShot https://seashot.odl.bzh"

  and if it is from a public SEAShot, you can also add a short link to the SEAShot by copy & pasting the specific SEAShot URL.
  Additionally, if you are showing some Copernicus Sentinel data, you may need to add:
  "Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data"