Operation of the CLIVAR & Carbon Hydrographic Data Office at UCSD/SIO

University Of California-San Diego Scripps Inst Of Oceanography, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

ABSTRACT OCE-0327555 Intellectual Merit: Hydrographic, nutrient and tracer data used in large scale ocean circulation studies will be brought together, verified, corrected for content and format errors, assembled with relevant documentation, and carefully prepared for dissemination and archive at the CLIVAR (CLImate VARiability and Predictability Program) & Carbon Hydrographic Data Office (CCHDO). In addition the CCHDO works to promote appropriate methodology, applicable community standards, communications, and data compatibility. Data of the type dealt with by the CCHDO are created by >100 data originators worldwide, sometimes 5 or more contributing to one file. All data users must cope with the temporal-, content-, and format-related file diversity these different originators engender. It is the enormous advantage of bringing data sets together to a common content and readability standard that remains the strongest argument for continuing support for the present data office, with a strong additional advantage that the documentation associated with the data are collected, reorganized to a common standard (where possible), and preserved with the data. Although the data office disseminates data via the internet, on CD-ROMs and data DVDs, it provides its total public holdings, including documentation, to the designated national archive and further distribution. Broader Impacts: With the merging, verification, content and format correction, and documentation carried out by the proposed data office, present-day and future US and international users of reference-quality CTD, routine hydrography, and tracer ocean profile data can literally use any of the data files written in commonly used exchange formats once they can easily read one such file. This both hugely reduces the personnel costs to data users to import and use data and also makes these data available to a much wider audience who do not employ data specialists. Moreover, the careful assembly of documentation with the data helps to assure a service lifetime for the data far into the future, contributing to a broad range of studies of long-term ocean variability. The clean-up of the data and rewriting into netCDF formats also make the data much more straightforward to import into computer models.