The Shipboard Environmental data Acquisition System (SEAS) is a real time application software developed and maintained at NOAA/AOML, which combines acquisition and transmission of environmental data collected over several platforms. The system acquires atmospheric and oceanographic data, such as meteorological parameters, sea surface salinity and temperature. It operates on cargo ships, NOAA vessels, University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) ships, and Coast Guard vessels, to produce high quality marine weather and oceanographic observations. SEAS is installed on more than 50 ships of the NOAA/AOML XBT network, which participate with NOAA/AOML in acquiring and transmitting data from more than 20,000 XBTs (eXpendable BathyThermograph) per year. The data acquired by the SEAS system are transmitted in real-time to The Global Telecommunication System (GTS) and to global data distribution centers (NOAA/NCEI, Coriolis) to be used by scientists and operational centers. The SEAS software is also installed on cargo ships and in the ships of the NOAA fleet to acquire and transmit ThermoSalinoGraph (TSG) data in support of pCO2 observations.

SEAS data include marine meteorlogical (Met), Automated Mutual-assistance Vessel Rescue system (AMVER), TSG, and XBT data acquired and transmitted in real-time via Inmarsat or Iridium satelites to NOAA/AOML SEAS Server. XBT profiles undergo near-real time automatic quality control (AQC) procedures at NOAA/AOML. The profiles that fail the AQC are submitted to visual quality control (VQC) using a MATLAB based code developed at NOAA/AOML, in which a trained operator decides whether or not to send the data to distribution centers for scientific and operational uses.