CLIVAR DACs

1
CLIVAR DACs

• Upper Ocean Thermal (XBT) MEDS, NOAA/AOML, BRMC
• Sea Surface Salinity IFREMER(????)
• Argo Argo Data System
• Drifters AOML/MEDS
• Ocean surface topography,
• vector winds, and SST JPL and CERSAT
• Moorings BODC and Oceansites
• Sea Level Univ Hawaii and BODC
• ADCP NOAA/Univ Hawaii JODC
• Marine Surface Meteorology Florida State Univ
  /GOSUD
• CLIVAR Carbon Hydrography Scripps

Increasing level of institutional support
The DACs assemble and distribute data metadata,
supply QC attributes, develop and distribute
products
2
First CLIVAR Data Meeting (2004) Outcome

• In general, several DAC personnel were available
  to engage in ocean data management for CLIVAR
  (climate) but asked what do you want us to do?

3
CLIVAR Response

• Formalization of CLIVAR data activities
• Develop a requirements document
• Suggested that ocean reanalyses offered a
  target/motivation for DAC activities
• Could DACs lead in organizing and synthesizing
  the historical observational data sets?

4
Challenges for CLIVAR

• Requirements describing CLIVARs requirements for
  data management turned out to be extremely
  difficult to develop.
• Extremely little of the ongoing ocean
  observations are labeled as CLIVAR
• The bounds of what data CLIVAR should manage is
  unclear, so do we do it all? or do we just do our
  small part?
• There are NO agreements for most of the ocean
  data collected by PIs to become a part of any
  CLIVAR data activity, therefore data flow has
  become an acute issue for some data streams (e.g.
  hydro)
• DACs were not set up to collect and analyze
  historical data

5
The Bad News

• Those data streams/DACs with no/little connection
  to the sustained observing system remain
  unorganized and may be difficult to continue to
  support with research funds
• Even some of the DACs established in data centers
  need help justifying their continuation
• There has been no credible assessment of DAC
  activities (e.g. the QC efforts), so it is
  difficult to determine their value, and how/if
  they should change their practices
• Some (e.g. ADCP, salinity) of the data streams
  still have not developed
• Some data flow is now very slow

6
The Good News

• Most of the DACs found funding to continue to
  operate, and have continued with little or no
  guidance
• Others (e.g. Argo, DMAC, etc) are leading
  evolution of ocean data management best practices
  (e.g. metadata standardization, interoperability)
• Ocean reanalyses have catalyzed groups to
  assemble and clean up historical ocean data sets
  (e.g. ENACT).

7
Recommendation

• Engage the DACs to produce an update to the 2002
  WOCE Global Data Set V3
• Best collection possible (may not be everything)
• Adopt best practices for standardization
  (metadata, file format, etc) across DACs
• 2 updates, e.g. 2010 and 2012 (?)
• Questions
• If we identified this effort as an international
  (CLIVAR) product, could we attract PI and
  National data center attention and willingness to
  submit/release their data?
• Added value of such a collection?
• Who would use it?
• Who would pay for meetings to make this happen?
  (most of the labor would be free!)

8
Unresolved Issues

• The organization of quality review of historical
  data
• Identifying obs system biases in critical data
  streams (temperature, salinity, sea level,
  velocities, etc)
• Value and coordination of quality control of near
  real-time data (XBTs)
• Non-sustained data streams, e.g. hydro, ADCP,
  salinity, etc need to be standardized and
  shepherded into internationally coordinated
  systems