SAOCE release notes
NEWS
New features, changes, improvements and bug fixes, listed by release day with the newest first.
Notes begin on 17 October 2026. Only days with a software release are listed; these dates are separate from the observation dates shown on the map. For instructions, open Help; for planned work, see the Roadmap.
Changes
- Notice of the forthcoming move to a University of the Western Cape server and the change of name to AfrOCE (African Ocean Conditions and Extremes), with updates to follow on this page.
Bug fixes
- Marine heatwave and cold-spell category maps now open for historical dates throughout each product’s available analysis record. The calendar, comparison maps and shared links can use these earlier dates; historical maps are rendered when requested.
Changes
- The provider gap notice now counts the missing days up to the previous day on every visit, so it stays current between daily runs, and dismissing it hides it only for the rest of the day. An open notice is kept when a daily run fails, instead of disappearing while the gap persists.
Bug fixes
- The map date box is now the site's own YYYY-MM-DD field with a calendar. Safari's built-in date control dropped typed digits after a pause, so a year such as 1995 became 0095.
- When the nearby API route reports that the worker could not be reached, the site retries on the direct route instead of showing the error.
New features
- A provider gap notice. When the data provider has not published the newest days, a notice below the top bar names the missing days, links to the provider's own alert where one exists, and states that SAOCE cannot influence the delay. It clears itself once the days arrive. Data status repeats it.
New features
- Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi now show their surface temperatures on the map. With OSTIA selected, point and area selections can analyse the lake observations using the same native-cell sampling and coverage checks as ocean selections.
New features
- A phone layout. On a screen narrower than 700 px the map fills the screen. Layers, Select, Analyse, Cards and More open the menus as sheets from a bar along the bottom, the dates sit above it, the legend folds to its colour scale, and the analysis cards are one sheet that you drag between three heights. Every selection is made by tapping: a point, the two corners of an area, the ends of a section.
Improvements
- Map data and service checks use a new connection route to reduce network delays. Long calculations and streamed summaries retain their existing connection so they can finish.
- Monitoring now distinguishes connection problems, analysis readiness, stale data and missing monitoring runs, helping the maintainer identify the cause of a problem.
Bug fixes
- The netCDF export of plotted data now works for drawn and imported polygons. If an export fails, the card scrolls to its error message.
- Brief connection failures can recover automatically before an analysis request is sent. A request that has already reached the service is not sent again by the proxy.
New features
- Calendar timelines across cards now share their visible dates. Wheel zoom, hand-pointer dragging and Home work across SST, anomaly, event and other calendar plots, including Hovmöllers. Analysis periods remain unchanged.
- SST and anomaly timelines show the selected product’s climatology and 90th/10th percentile thresholds at windows of five years or less. Anomaly references are departures from climatology in °C. References are cached and included in plotted-data exports.
Improvements
- Marine heatwave and cold-spell cards now export each day’s area-mean SST and event threshold beside the departure, over the whole interval, in the plotted-data CSV, netCDF and JSON, the card’s daily CSV and the report ZIP. The daily CSV button names its contents.
Bug fixes
- New SST card exports retain the result’s actual OSTIA or OISST product and native resolution, including after changing the active product. Older saved results without product identity are explicitly labelled instead of being assumed to be OSTIA.
Changes
- A menu bar replaces the tool panel and the control boxes. File, Layers, Select, six question menus, Cards and Help hold every tool, layer, method and panel, and work with a mouse, a touch screen or the keyboard. Adding ?shell=classic to the address shows the earlier layout.
- The screen now follows one layout: menus at the top; your dates, Chart comparison & downloads, the hover preview, cursor readout and legend in the left column; docked cards in the right column; the timeline and map navigation along the bottom. Panels share one width and the same spacing.
- NEWS, keyboard shortcuts, the Quick start guide, About and feedback are in the Help menu.
New features
- Keep up to four Hovmöller sections open at once, labelled H1 onwards. Each card retains its own route, SST product, native resolution, dates and settings. Closing a card frees a slot.
- Click a date inside a calendar chart or Hovmöller to update the map. Scroll over the plot to zoom around the pointer, without changing analysis dates or requesting another calculation.
- Setup can show and hide African waterways, with detailed streams appearing on zoom. South African estuarine ecosystems and micro-systems add local coastal detail. The preference is saved across visits.
- Read brief daily release notes in the new NEWS tab, available from the map and every help page.
- Cards → Close all cards removes every card and keeps the layer, date and map view; saved work reopens from File → Saved work.
Improvements
- Rivers now follow the scale-aware approach used by Copernicus Marine: a GloFAS continental overview fades into detailed OpenStreetMap waterways, with finer tidal inlet outlines and water-body names on zoom. South African estuary and micro-system extents remain available.
- First visits now open one docked Benguela seasonal-cycle example instead of four regional cards with multiple figures. The expanded Quick start guide introduces the example and map controls; saved dashboards are preserved.
- The ordinary mouse wheel now zooms the map towards the pointer. Scrolling inside a calendar plot zooms that timeline, while scrolling over card text moves through the card.
- Arrange and Dock now include all open Hovmöllers alongside the other analysis cards. Changing the layout retains completed figures without requesting another calculation.
- Help now explains both SST products, their independent latest dates, the four-card workflow and the limits of saving and sharing sections.
- The hover preview shows 14 days instead of eight, with every daily value marked and weekly date labels.
- Chart comparison & downloads opens over the map without moving the cards, and its options, actions and downloads share one aligned layout.
- Docked cards fill the width of their column, and floating cards can be dragged up to the menu bar and stay clear of the left column.
Bug fixes
- Archive captions, event notes and date controls no longer overlap at narrow window widths.
- The legend and readings no longer cover Day detail when the timeline grows taller.
- Updated the worker's certificate bundle and image library to resolve newly reported dependency vulnerabilities.
Changes
- First-time visitors see a notice that SAOCE is undergoing active development and testing, with performance limited by the current server while a production move is pending.
Improvements
- Repeat map requests reuse unchanged prepared assets, reducing transfers. Anomaly and trend grids also reuse prepared responses, and background OISST availability polling pauses when the page is hidden.
- Wind acquisition can try its alternative mirror after transient provider failures.
Bug fixes
- Coastal buffers now use the displayed African coastline, including Somalia and the Red Sea. Valid coastal clicks are no longer rejected because the analysis coastline ended too far south.
- SST Trend's legend and start/end-year controls occupy separate areas at the bottom of the map.
Improvements
- The header prominently names the active SST product, its native resolution and the latest observation available on the server. Hover previews also identify the product and cell resolution.
- Daily SST hover previews are available while viewing trends, seven-day change and seasonal comparison maps.
Bug fixes
- The calendar and Latest SST action use the selected product's available dates. OISST no longer borrows a newer OSTIA date.
- All nine SST-related map layers use the selected product, including OISST uncertainty, seven-day change, marine heatwaves and cold-spells. Existing analysis cards retain their original product.
- Typed coastal selections retain their entered latitudes, and the map readout remains visible beside analysis cards.
New features
- Long analyses run as queued jobs with progress, cancellation and recovery after a browser reload.
- Named-region dashboards can show their dated published conditions when the live analysis service is unavailable.
Improvements
- Updated application dependencies and hosted map-label fonts locally. Kept the stable map engine and current landing projection.
- Completed broader checks of native OSTIA/OISST maps, product comparisons and data downloads.
Bug fixes
- OISST acquisition can use NOAA's daily files when the monthly service is unreachable. Transport failures are reported rather than treated as confirmed missing source days.
- Product-comparison series retain the full requested calendar, including gaps shared by both products.