The National Oceanographic Data Center is the nation’s archive

and distribution center for U.S. coastal and global ocean data. It

supports the strategic goals of the U.S. Department of Commerce

and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Message from the Director

Henry R. Frey, Ph.D.

Director

October 1, 1999

In 1999, NODC tripled its online data availability, issued many important new data and information products,

and enhanced others. Three CD-ROM products were published—the World Ocean Atlas 1998, the NOAA

Marine Environmental Buoy Data web-disc, and the Barents Sea Atlas 1998. The Harmful Algal Bloom and

Coral Reef Data Management Systems are taking shape; users can obtain more types of data from the Interactive Data Access and Retrieval system; and for the first time, time-series data were made available online by

NODC through the Coastal Ocean Time Series Database. The NOAA Central Library increased the holdings

of the NOAA Photo Library Home Page. Several NODC staff won Department of Commerce and national

awards, and published numerous papers in peer-reviewed journals.

NODC continued its active role in the exchange of data and expertise with other countries. We hosted a

number of national and international dignitaries and scientists, and coordinated and participated in international data management meetings. NODC also ensured that its goals match those of the NOAA Strategic Plan.

We congratulate Mr. Gregory W. Withee, who served as NODC Director from 1985 to 1991 and was appointed in July to the position of NOAA’s Assistant Administrator for Satellite and Information Services.

NODC joins in the celebration of NOAA’s 30th birthday in the year 2000. We look forward to the next year in

which NODC will continue to improve the quality of its products and services in support of our customers in

NOAA and other national and international agencies and institutions.

• The Interactive Data Access and Retrieval System

(IDARS) development continued toward the goal of

providing a common graphical user interface-based

tool to data access and browsing. The most recent

real-time beach water temperatures and 24-hour temperature plots from beaches around all U.S. coasts are

now online. IDARS users can now composite satellite

sea surface temperature images while online in intervals of from one day to months.

• More than 5,000 images were added to the NOAA

Photo Library Home Page bringing the total to more

than 11,000. The NOAA images have generated 4

million accesses to the library’s online usage statistics, and the NOAA Photo Library Web site was selected as a “Hot Site” by USA Today. Photos from the

Library have been published in newspapers and

magazines around the world.

• NODC Director, Dr. Henry Frey, served as the

Chair of the Technical Programs Committee of the

Marine Technology Society’s Ocean Community

Conference ’98, which included over 300 papers; he

also chaired the technical session on Physical

Oceanographic Real-Time Systems.

• The Central Library hosted 13 popular Brown Bag

Luncheon programs featuring presentations by

NOAA experts. Topics included Striped Bass Restoration, La Niña, Remote Sensing of Coral Reefs, the

Global Ocean Observing System, NEXRAD, and

footage on the Oklahoma City tornadoes.

• The NOAA Central Library coordinated desktop

access to 48 electronic journals for NOAA staff in

Silver Spring, Miami, and Seattle.

Awards and Honors

• Sydney Levitus received the Department of Commerce Gold medal in a group award for research describing the temporal variability of the temperaturesalinity structure of the World Ocean and its effects

on global climate change.

• The Reference Staff of the NOAA Central Library

received the Department of Commerce Bronze Medal

for the creation of “WINDandSEA”, an Internet locator to over 800 referred sources of NOAA-related information.

• J. David Hardy received the Department of Commerce Bronze Medal for his contribution of thousands of researched taxonomic names to the interagency Integrated Taxonomic Information System.

• Members of NODC’s Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry are part of the TOPEX/Poseidon Team that

won this year’s William T. Pecora Award for group

achievement. The William T. Pecora Award is presented annually to recognize outstanding contributions by individuals or groups toward the understanding

of the Earth by means of remote sensing.

• NODC’s web site was awarded a Snap Editors’ Choice

designation in recognition of its excellence in design, content and editorial presentation.

Selected Publications

Boyer, T.P., M. Conkright, and S. Levitus, 1999: Seasonal variability of dissolved oxygen and percent oxygen saturation in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. DeepSea Research, 46, 1593-1613.

Conkright, M.E., W.W. Gregg, and S. Levitus, 1999: Seasonal cycle of phosphate in the world ocean. Deep-Sea

Research (in press).

Cheney, R.E., M.M. Ali, and R. Sharma, 1998: An Atlas

of the North Indian Ocean Eddies from Topex Altimeter

Derived Sea Surface Heights, Special Publ. 69-98, Indian Space Research Org., Bangalore, India.

Sun, L.C., 1999: Data Inter-Operability Driven by Oceanic Data Assimilation Needs. Marine Technology Society Journal (in press).

Vossepoel, F., R. Reynolds, and L. Miller, 1999: Use of

dynamic height observations to estimate salinity variability in the equatorial Pacific, J. Atmos. Oceanic

Tech., 16 (10), 1400-1414.

FY 2000 Plan

• Ensure that all data sets obtained by NODC are

archived, and migrate archived original 9-track tapes to

optical media.

• Expand the amount of data available online.

• Provide WEB-based, integrated, online access to

archived originator data files, and provide online links to

full-text NOAA documents.

• Provide increased access to cross-discipline data sets

through the NOAA Virtual Data System.

• Implement the Harmful Algal Bloom database prototype with sample data sets for decision support.

• Complete the design of the Coral Reef Information

Management System.

• Expand the Coastal Ocean Time Series database.

• Produce Version 2 of the World Ocean Database ’98

(WOD98) in time and geographic sorts.

• Complete Version 2 of the World Ocean Circulation

Experiment Data Set CD-ROMs.

• Publish papers documenting interannual-decadal variability in ocean heat storage.

The National Oceanographic Data Center

SSMC3, 4th Floor, 1315 East-West Highway

Silver Spring MD 20910

http://www.nodc.noaa.gov
World Ocean Atlas 1998

This atlas enables users to learn about the ocean’s

properties, including temperature, salinity, dissolved

oxygen, derived oxygen variables, nutrients (phosphate, nitrate, silicate) and chlorophyll along with

fields of various statistics. The atlas, a three CD-ROM

set, is based on data in NODC’s World Ocean Database 1998 (WOD98) which was released in 1998.

Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) Data Management

System (DMS)

This project aims to provide coastal physical,

chemical, and biological data for decision support and

model development. During FY 1999, a database design was chosen and work began on obtaining significant data sets. The HAB DMS development is being

guided by industry and research representatives.

Barents Sea Atlas 1998

The time and space distribution of nearly 75,000

ocean stations (temperature, salinity, and oxygen) occupied in the Barents Sea during 1898-1993 is presented in this CD-ROM atlas. Data are recorded in a

form designed for use in electronic spreadsheets and/

or databases. Monthly maps defining the station distributions are given for every year. Monthly mean fields

of temperature and salinity distribution for the depths

0, 30, 50, 100, and 200 meters, with a grid distance of

10 minutes latitude x 30 minutes longitude, are plotted using objective analysis techniques. A description of the

summer and winter seasons is given in terms of the spatial-temporal variability of thermohaline characteristics of

the Barents Sea. This atlas was issued jointly by the

Murmansk Marine Biological Institute (Russia) and

NODC.

Coral Reef Information Management System

NODC established important links with NOAA and

other groups studying coral reefs—the rainforests of the

sea. NODC is working with the NOAA Working Group

on Coral Reefs and the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force. A

Coral Reef Data Management and Monitoring Initiative

was included in the FY 2001 NOAA Strategic Plan to obtain funding for this work. An NODC web site for coral

reef, sea grasses, and mangrove forests is under development, and lists of coral reef locations and coral reef related species are being compiled.

NOAA Marine Environmental Buoy Data (An Internet

Connectable CD-ROM Set)

A seven-disc

CD-ROM set contains meteorological

and oceanographic

data collected from

moored buoys and

shore stations operated by NOAA’s National Data Buoy

Center (NDBC). The

set includes 16.5

gigabytes of coastal

buoy data through

December 1997. This is an Internet/CD-ROM hybrid set

that can be viewed using an Internet browser. Internet

links on the discs provide direct access to real-time data

and time series plots available on the NODC website.

Time Series Database

The new Coastal Ocean Time Series Data Base prototype includes all of the moored current meter data at

NODC (over 10,000 stations). It is available through

NODC’s Internet site. The web-based interface permits

graphical selection of region and time period of interest,

and various graphical displays of the data. It features realtime series data analysis and display.

Data Management

A backlog of unprocessed ocean profile data, that developed during 1994-1998, was reduced by over 90%.

NODC also significantly reduced the backlog of uncataloged data sets.

 The number of

online hosts more

than doubled

from 290,000 in

FY 1998 to

610,000 in FY

1999. Both the

volume of data

and the number of

data files served

tripled during the

same period.

 Data contributors from 36 institutions forwarded

173 data shipments to NODC. Data in all shipments, amounting to

over 5.8 gigabytes, were archived and are available in

their original formats.

During 1999, NODC provided data and information to customers through the NODC web site (over

600,000 accesses), and by direct contacts with requesters.

Data Management for

Ocean Research Programs

• Dr. Frey was appointed as a member of the U.S.

Coastal GOOS (Global Ocean Observing System)

Steering Committee and of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) Data Products Committee.

• Dr. Margarita Conkright was chosen to lead the

JGOFS (Joint Global Ocean Flux Study) team on

data management.

• Mr. Robert Gelfeld served as chairman of the

ICES (International Council for Exploration of the

Seas) Working Group on Marine Data Management.

International Activities

The World Data Center-A (WDC-A) for Oceanography hosted

the “International GODAR

(Global Ocean

Data Archaeology and Rescue) Review

Meeting”.

More than 75

individuals

from countries

around the

world attended.

NODC and the Irish Marine Institute (MI) began making plans for co-hosting the next International Ocean Data

Symposium in 2001. Leading the MI group were Geoffrey O’Sullivan, MI Development Director, and Bronwyn

Cahill, Director of the MI Oceanographic Data Center.

NODC hosted several international visitors including

Dr. Yuval Cohen (Director General, Israel Oceanographic

and Limnological Research), Mr. Hae-Saek Kang (Korea

Ocean Research and Development Institute), and Mr.

Wang Hong (Deputy Director of the Chinese National

Marine Data and Information Service). Lt. Cdr. Antonio

Guimares (Brazil) visited NODC for data management

training.

The Russian Naval Ocean Research Center in St. Petersburg agreed to declassify Russian naval oceanographic data from the Atlantic Ocean as part of a project

with WDC-A for Oceanography to develop an Atlas of

the Atlantic Ocean.

The NOAA Central Library hosted the annual meeting

of the Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA)

Board. The Board is comprised of national partners from

27 countries and 4 United Nations agencies.

NODC participated in the International Conference on

Scientific Aspects of Coral Reef Assessment, Monitoring,

and Restoration. The conference was attended by approximately 500 coral reef scientists and managers from

around the world.

Highlights

• NODC provided daily, near real-time satellite altimeter analyses of the Gulf Stream region to NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Prediction in support of

an operational demonstration of the Coastal Ocean Forecast System (COFS). Assimilation of these data into the

COFS model resulted in improved initial conditions and

more reliable forecasts.

New products from NODC