Happy 40th Birthday to NOAA's National Oceanographic Data Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. The center is the place to go for information on everything from global sea level to beach temperatures around the country. Data address climate change, management of coastal and deep water resources, marine transportation, and natural disasters. Director H. Lee Dantzler says the center houses the world's largest publicly accessible collection of global oceanographic data. It's an archive for the world's scientific and public users.
Foreign data is collected and maintained through direct exchanges with other countries.
The center hosts the NOAA Central Library with its regional libraries in Miami and Seattle. It also supports NOAA field libraries or information centers at about 30 U.S. sites. The center itself has field offices with major oceanographic facilities in Hawaii, California, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Florida, and Washington. Under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences, it also serves as the U.S. World Data Center for Oceanography. NOAA's National Oceanographic Data Center NOAA Central Library NOAA and the Canadian Space Agency jointly sponsored a SAR Users Symposium, highlighting a scientific tool demonstrating promise in monitoring and supporting response to serious environmental hazards.