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.

Oceanographic Data and Information Services

NESDIS/NODC

October 1, 2000

The National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) manages the world’s largest collection of publicly available

oceanographic data. The NODC holdings include in situ and remotely-sensed physical, chemical, and biological

oceanographic data from coastal and deep ocean areas. NODC holdings currently contain more than a terabyte of

data extending back one hundred years. The volume is expected to grow exponentially as new ocean observing

systems are deployed.

Through the archive and access services of NODC, these data are being reused to answer questions about climate

change, ocean phenomena, management of coastal and marine resources, marine transportation, and natural disasters. Another significant user community is in education, where these data and information products help teach each

new generation of students about the oceans.

In FY2000, NODC implemented a major redesign of its entire website and added some important new applications.

Users can now go directly to online data in their area of interest, without regard to NODC organizational structure.

The new website incorporates a feedback link on most subpages to encourage users to contact NODC with navigation problems, suggestions, and general comments. A “Data Applications” system has also been implemented so

that customers may provide details about how they use the data they download from NODC. The new design

conforms more closely with the principles of the FirstGov Federal web portal, as well as with the user accessibility

goals of NESDIS and NOAA.

NODC Annual Report FY2000
Direct Access to NODC Archives

The NODC digital archive contains in situ oceanographic data submitted by ocean researchers. Previously, NODC patrons requesting data from the archive

had to contact NODC via phone or email, and NODC

personnel had to retrieve and deliver the data. Now, all

of NODC’s archived digital data is available through a

new online system called NODC Direct. Users can

select data and have the data sets delivered by FTP. In

the near future, users will be able to create more

advanced queries, and select data using new technology developed within the National Virtual Data System

(NVDS) project.

http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/col/projects/access/nodcdir.html

Ocean Atlases

NODC produces special products and analyses from its

data holdings. Perhaps the best known examples are

the World Ocean Database (WOD) and the World

Ocean Atlas (WOA). These products, available online

or as CD-ROMs, provide a consistently formatted

resource of ocean profile data, with ojective quality

control applied. Version 2 of the latest WOD includes

temperature, salinity, oxygen, plankton, pigment and

nutrient data. The Atlas presents statistical summaries

and gridded fields of these parameters on a monthly,

seasonal, and annual basis from the 1940’s through

1998. WOA Figures are now also available on the

NODC website and on CD-ROM.

http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/pr_wodv2.html

http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/pr_woaf.html

Another Important new product is the Biological Atlas

of the Arctic Seas 2000: Plankton of the Barents

and Kara Seas. This atlas describes both the climatological and decadal

distribution of plankton

data in these seas,

which are known to

have undergone

climate shifts in

physical variables (e.g.,

temperature) during

this century.

World Ocean Circulation

Experiment

NODC continued its support of the World Ocean

Circulation Experiment (WOCE), serving as the

Upper Ocean Thermal Data Assembly Center, and

publishing Version 2 of the data sets on CD-ROM.

WOCE, a part of the World Climate Research

Programme (WCRP), combined resources from

nearly 30 countries to make unprecedented in situ and

satellite observations of the global ocean between

1990 and 1998.

The main goal of

WOCE is to

observe poorly

understood, but

important physical

processes in an

attempt to study the large scale circulation of the

ocean. These CDs will serve as a unique resource for

climate researchers and marine scientists for decades

to come. All CDs are designed to be accessed using

an Internet browser.

http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/General/NODC-cdroms.html#woce

http://www.cms.udel.edu/woce

Earth System Monitor

NOAA’s Earth System Monitor began its tenth year

of publication with a subscription list of over 3000.

This quarterly publication reports on NOAA products

and services to educate the public as well as program

managers in other agencies and institutions. NODC

staff edits and publishes the Earth System Monitor

and has recently placed back issues online for public

search and access.

http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/General/NODCPubs/

New Coastal Center

As part

of the

FY 2000

appropriation

process,

Congress provided funding to establish the National

Coastal Data Development Center (NCDDC) at Bay

St. Louis, Mississippi. The NCDDC will be a

National Center that provides for the archive of, and

access to, the long-term coastal data record. NCDDC

will work closely with many of the federal, state, and

local agencies, academic institutions, and the private

sector to create a unified, long-term archive for

coastal data sets.
Warming of the Oceans

NODC’s Ocean Climate Laboratory annouced that

the world ocean has warmed significantly over the

past 40 years, based on analysis of in situ observations. Sydney Levitus, who heads the Ocean Climate

Laboratory, reported the findings in the March 24,

2000 issue of Science magazine in an article, Warming of the World Ocean. Media interest was extremely high, and articles appeared in newspapers

throughout the country including the NY Times,

Washington Post, and San Francisco Chronicle.

Radio and television coverage by CBS News, CNN

World News, National Public Radio, and a number of

local radio stations also carried the announcement.

[see graph above]

Levitus, S., J. Antonov, T.P. Boyer, C. Stephens, 2000, Warming of

the World Ocean. Science, 287, 2225-2229.

Security

Providing online access to the public comes with

increased security risk. NODC Information Technology staff have implemented improved “firewall”

systems based on non-proprietary hardware and

software that handle greater volumes of traffic at less

cost, with reduced risk. This work has become a

model for other NOAA installations.

Archive

NODC has established redundant data holdings in

conformance with the National Archive and Records

Administration (NARA) archive management policies.

One copy of the data, in original form, is stored in offsite storage as the preservation copy, and a working

copy provides service access. NODC also installed an

IBM 3590 tape transport system to conform to the

NNDC media storage standard. To assure the integrity

of the NODC archive data sets, MD5 Checksum values

are computed and used to validate all future copies.

Also, to mitigate risk to the data, NODC has implemented virus scanning procedures for all incoming data.

Library Services

On March 30, 2000, Librarian of Congress, Dr. James

Billington, presented the 1999 Federal Library of the

Year Award to the NOAA Central Library staff. The

Department of Commerce Aquaculture Initiative, funded

through the NOAA Strategic Plan - Build Sustainable

Fisheries, included the NOAA Central Library as an

integral part of the outreach program. A new Aquaculture Information Clearing House will be housed at the

Library which will include staffing, a website, supporting documents, and international dissemination of

aquaculture information. The NOAA Photo Collection

(compiled by the NOAA Central Library) increased its

online photos to 16,000, and has been an enormous

success over the past few years. http://www.lib.noaa.gov
International

Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS) - The

JGOFS Data Management Task Team (DMTT), chaired

by Margarita Conkright, met in Kiel, Germany this

summer, to discuss present and future activities of the

DMTT. The DMTT members presented the status of

JGOFS data for their countries, current activities

related to JGOFS and JGOFS-related data management, and future plans. An article describing this meeting was published in U.S. JGOFS News 10(4)14-15.

http://ads.smr.uib.no/jgofs/jgofs.htm

International Council for the Exploration of the Sea

(ICES) - Robert D. Gelfeld serves as Chairman of the

ICES Working Group on Marine Data Management.

The Working Group provides a forum for the exchange

of expertise and ideas for those involved in marine data

management in the 19 ICES Member Countries.During

the past year the Group was involved in the setting of

standards for the quality assurance and exchange of

oceanographic data, and monitoring and encouraging

the flow of data to the ICES Oceanographic Data Bank

and other international centers.

http://www.ices.dk/committe/occ/mdm/

World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) -

Kurt Schnebele and Charles Sun attended the WOCE

Data Products Committee's (DPC) meeting in April

2000. The meeting defined the format of the WOCE

Global Data CD-ROM version 2.0, and considered how

the WOCE data will make the transition from the Data

Assembly Centers (DACs) to a permanent archive.

NODC is the DAC for upper ocean thermal data.

http://www.soc.soton.ac.uk/GDD/hydro/nph/dpc13/

http://www.cms.udel.edu/woce

NODC Published Articles

1) Boyer, T. P., M. E. Conkright, and S. Levitus, 1999.

Seasonal variability of dissolved oxygen and

percent oxygen saturation in the Atlantic and

Pacific Oceans. Deep-Sea Res., 46, 1593-1613.

2) Matishov, G. G., V. V. Denisov, A, N. Zuyev, V. A.

Golubev, N.M. Adrov, S. Levitus, I.V. Smolyar,

1999. Climatic Atlas of the Barents Sea. Doklady

Earth Sciences (English translation of Doklady

Akademii Nauk, Russia), 366 (5), 692-694.

3) Conkright, M. E., W. W. Gregg, and S. Levitus,

2000. Seasonal cycle of phosphate in the world

ocean. Deep-Sea Res., 47, 159-175.

4) Jones, C. S., J. F. Shriver, and J. J. O'Brien, 2000.

The effects of El Nino on rainfall and fire in

Florida. The Florida Geographer, 30 55-69.

FY 2001 Plan

• Complete World Ocean Database 2001, adding

approximately 300,000 new temperature profiles.

• Provide web accessibility to Harmful Algal Bloom

data sets.

• Complete enhancements to Global Temperature

Salinity Profile Program (GTSPP) database.

• Initiate the DOC Aquaculture Information Center,

which is part of the Implementation plan of the DOC

Aquaculture Policy.

• Implement the National Coastal Data Development

Center (NCDDC), and host the Center dedication.

• Complete evaluation of the NCDDC prototype

Information Technology architecture, including the

distributed object computing-based Data Exchange

Infrastructure.

• Migrate NODC Archive to standard NOAA/NESDIS

media.

National Oceanographic Data Center

SSMC 3, 4th Floor

1315 East-West Highway

Silver Spring, MD 20910

http://www.nodc.noaa.gov

5) Levitus, S., J. Antonov, T.P. Boyer, C. Stephens,

2000. Warming of the World Ocean. Science, 287,

2225-2229.

6) Loukos, H., F. Vivier, P. P. Murphy, D. E. Harrison,

C. Le Quere, 2000. Interannual ariability of equatorial Pacific CO2 fluxes estimated from temperature

and salinity data. Geophys. Res. Lett., 27, 1735.

7) Sun, L.C., S. S. Niou, 2000. Building the Web-based

Time Series Database at the U.S. National Oceanographic Data Center. Eos, Trans. Am. Gophys. Un.,

81(19), S282