ESEAS Work Package 1

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ESEAS Work Package 1

• Lesley Rickards
• British Oceanographic Data Centre
• Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory

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ESEAS Work Package 1

• Quality Control of Sea Level Observations
• Main objective
• to provide standardised access to a considerable
  fraction of the European tide gauge data base
• quality control a considerable fraction of the
  European tide gauge data base

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ESEAS Work Package 1

• WORKPACKAGE 1 PARTNERS
• P1 Norwegian Mapping Authority (Statens kartverk)
  Hønefoss, Norway
• P3 NERC Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory
  Birkenhead, U.K.
• P5 Spanish Institute of Oceanography Madrid,
  Spain
• P6 Puerto del Estado Madrid, Spain
• P10 Environmental Agency of the Republic of
  Slovenia Ljubljana, Slovenia
• P11 Institute of Meteorology and Water
  Management-Maritime Branch Gdynia, Poland
• P12 Hydrographic Institute of the Republic of
  Croatia Split/Croatia
• P13 Andrija Mohorovicic Geophysical Institute
  (AMGI), Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb,
  Zagreb, Croatia
• P15 Geodetic Institute of Vilnius Gediminas
  Technical University Vilnius, Lithuania
• P16 Universidad Politecnica de Cataluna
  Barcelona, Spain
• P17 Oceanography Division of HNHS Athens, Greece
• P18 Israel Oceanographic and Limnological
  Research Haifa, Israel
• P21 CNR, Istituto Talassografico di Trieste
  Trieste, Italy

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ESEAS Work Package 1

• BACKGROUND
• European tide gauge data includes more than 10000
  years of observations.
• Many of these data are available as monthly mean
  values through the PSMSL
• But accessing the hourly values is not simple,
  and can be very difficult
• Moreover, for studies of long-period sea level
  variations, a thorough quality control of the
  records becomes mandatory
• PSMSL carries out standard controls of the
  incoming data, but without access to the hourly
  values, errors may remain undiscovered

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ESEAS Work Package 1

• ESEAS is starting to develop web-based tools for
  standardised access to the ESEAS Observing Sites
  and additional national databases.
• ESEAS-RI project will support this development
  and thus help to give access to a significant
  fraction of the existing hourly values.
• This will allow for a rigorous quality control of
  the hourly data and the computation of cleaned
  series of monthly means.

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ESEAS Work Package 1
Current network of ESEAS Observing Sites Red
dots tide gauges Blue diamonds sites with
tide gauges and co-located CGPS. Blue
triangles designated MedGLOSS sites (available
to ESEAS through co-ordination with MedGLOSS).
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ESEAS Work Package 1

• The ESEAS network of Observing Sites consists of
  more than 150 tide gauges.
• ESEAS has specified four main applications for
  these gauges, namely
• APPLICATION A
• Obtain an accurate regional measure of the rate
  of change of absolute sea level in each of the
  basins around the continent.
• This requires stable long-term operation of the
  gauges and co-location with GPS.

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ESEAS Work Package 1

• APPLICATION B
• Monitor the circulation around the European
  coasts for regional oceanography, water quality
  modelling etc.
• Such gauges may comprise pairs of gauges at
  straits, for example,
• at Gibraltar and Ceuta for Mediterranean inflow
  studies
• between the central Mediterranean islands
• at either end of the Turkish Straits
• across the Straits of Dover
• across the Skagerrak, etc.

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ESEAS Work Package 1

• APPLICATION C
• Provide calibration of satellite radar altimetry
• Requirements are broadly the same as for
  Application A
• However, the open ocean sites, and particularly
  islands, are clearly the most valuable ones

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ESEAS Work Package 1

• APPLICATION D
• Storm surge warning and other practical
  applications
• For this application, real-time and near
  real-time access to the observations is the main
  specification
• For example, such gauges are clearly required in
  the northern Adriatic, North and Irish Seas,
  where rapid relative sea-level changes are a main
  measurement quantity of interest

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ESEAS Work Package 1

• Based on detailed requirements for the different
  applications, the sites of the tide gauges
  committed to the ESEAS will be classified both
  with respect to
• their potential application
• and the actual situation
• This classification will help to direct resources
  for necessary upgrading and data quality control.

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ESEAS Work Package 1

• OBJECTIVES AND INPUT TO WORKPACKAGE
• The quality control work package will create a
  web-based interface to the national databases of
  the ESEAS Operational Centres and thus give
  access to the data of the ESEAS Observing Sites.
• For a selected subset of the sites, the data will
  be quality controlled with to be agreed upon
  standard routines and the resulting high-quality
  data set of hourly data will be used to compute a
  series of monthly means for these gauges.
• For selected Application A sites, analog records
  will be digitised and data made available online.
  
• This WP also includes measures for transfer of
  knowledge in quality control from the most
  advanced participants to those less experienced.

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ESEAS Work Package 1

• DESCRIPTION OF WORK
• T1.1 Requirements for ESEAS Operational Sites
  satisfying the criteria for Applications A - D
  will be specified (P1, P3, P5, P10, P12, P15,
  P16, P18) and the proposed ESEAS Operational
  Sites will be classified according to these
  specifications (P1, P5, P18). Only those sites
  meeting the requirements for at least one
  specification will be certified as ESEAS
  Operational Sites.

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ESEAS Work Package 1

• T1.2 Based on existing documents such as the
  relevant IOC Manuals and the EOSS Position Paper,
  standard routines for quality control of tide
  gauge data will be specified (P1, P3, P5, P6,
  P10, P12, P15, P17, P18). In particular,
  procedures for tests based on multi-stations will
  be defined and, if necessary, implement in new
  software (P3, P5, P6, P18).

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ESEAS Work Package 1

• T1.3 A web-based interface to the databases of
  the ESEAS Operational Centres will be designed
  (P1, P3, P5, P9, P10, P11, P15, P17, P18, P20,
  P21), implemented and validated (P1, P5, P18).

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ESEAS Work Package 1

• T1.4 A comprehensive survey of potential data
  (charts etc.) for data archaeology rescue will
  be carried out (P3).
• For some selected Application A tide gauges
  (e.g. in the Eastern part of the Baltic Sea, the
  Adriatic), older analog records will be digitised
  (P10, P11, P12, P13, P15) and the hourly values
  made available together with the digital data
  already available through the web interface.

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ESEAS Work Package 1

• T1.5 The hourly values of the ESEAS Operational
  Sites will be quality controlled and a database
  of high quality hourly values will be compiled
  (P3, P5, P6, P9, P10, P11, P12, P15, P16, P18,
  P20, P21).
• This task also includes necessary knowledge
  transfer from the more experienced participants
  to those with less experience in quality control
  (P3). Based on the new time series, high-quality
  series of monthly means will be computed (P3, P5,
  P6, P9, P10, P11, P12, P15, P16, P17, P18, P20,
  P21).

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ESEAS Work Package 1

• DELIVERABLES
• D1.1 Specifications for ESEAS Operational Sites
• D1.2 Standards for quality control of tide gauge
  observations
• D1.3 Classification of ESEAS Operational Sites
  for Application A - D
• D1.4 Web interface to ESEAS Sea level data base,
  hourly values
• D1.5 Quality-controlled high-resolution hourly
  data base
• D1.6 Catalog of paper-based data sets in Europe
  requiring data rescue
• D1.7 New series of monthly means

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ESEAS Work Package 1

• MILESTONES
• M1.1 Agreement on site specifications
• (2 mon)
• M1.2 Agreement on quality-control routines
• (3 mon)
• M1.3 Agreement on design of web interface
• (4 mon)
• M1.4 Establishment of web interface
• (8 mon)
• M1.5 Classification of ESEAS Observing Sites
• (6 mon)
• M1.6 Catalog of paper-based data sets available
• (12 mon)
• M1.7 Digitising of analog records completed
• (15 mon)
• M1.8 Quality control completed
• (24 mon)

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ESEAS Work Package 1

• WORK PLAN MONTHS 1-12
• Most milestones are in first 12 months
• T1.1 carried out by e-mail discussion? Some
  preliminary work already done.
• Should be completed by month 3
• T1.2 will start now
• T1.3 some progress already
• T1.4 will start now
• Work must be done on T1.2 before T1.5 can start
• WP1 Workshop at POL? Quality control procedures,
  data archaeology