noaa's national oceanographic data center

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NOAA’s National Oceanographic NOAA’s National Oceanographic Data CenterData Center

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National Oceanographic Data Center

• The National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) is a national repository and dissemination facility for global oceanographic data which acquires and preserves a historical record of the Earth's changing environment to be used for operational applications and ocean climate research.

• NODC is one of the national environmental data centers, under the National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service (NESDIS), operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

• The main NODC facility is located in Silver Spring, Maryland and is made up of five divisions: the Marine Data Stewardship Division, Information Systems and Management Division, the NOAA Central Library, the Ocean Climate Laboratory, and the National Coastal Data Development Center.

• The NODC also has field offices collocated with major government or academic oceanographic laboratories in Stennis Space Center, MS; Miami, FL; La Jolla, CA; Seattle, WA, and Honolulu, HI.

• The center provides data products and services to scientists, engineers, resource managers, policy makers, and other users in the United States and around the world.

Overview

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• Established in 1961, the NODC was originally an interagency facility administered by the U.S. Naval Hydrographic (later Oceanographic) Office.

• The NODC was transferred to NOAA in 1970 when NOAA was created by Executive Order.

• In the words of its charter, the NODC serves to "acquire, process, preserve, and disseminate oceanographic data." Its primary mission is to ensure that global oceanographic data sets collected at great cost are maintained in a permanent archive that is easily accessible to the world science community and to other users.

History

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NOAA’s Mission

• To describe and predict changes in the Earth’s environment.

• To conserve and manage the Nation’s coastal and marine resources to ensure sustainable economic opportunities.

NESDIS’ Mission• To deliver accurate, timely, and reliable satellite observations

and integrated products and to provide long-term stewardship for global environmental data in support of the NOAA mission.

NODC’s Mission• To provide scientific stewardship of national and international

marine environmental and ecosystem data and information.

NODC’s Vision• Ensure that global oceanographic data sets collected at great

cost are maintained in a permanent archive that is easily accessible


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National Oceanographic Data CenterOrganizational Chart

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Department of Commerce

National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration

National Oceanographic

Data Center

National Climatic Data

Center

National Geophysical Data

Center

NOAA Weather Service

NOAA Satellites & Information

NOAA Fisheries

NOAA Marine & Aviation Operations

NOAA Ocean Service

NOAA Research

National Coastal Data Development

Center

NOAA Line Office Organization

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NODC LocationsThree Components:National Oceanographic Data Center Silver SpringNOAA Central/Regional LibraryNational Coastal Data Development Center

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NODC Facts and FiguresPeople and Facilities

• People– 65 Federal Employees– 65 Contractor Employee Workforce

• Facilities– Silver Spring, MD SSMC Building 3 (2nd and 4th Floor)– Stennis Space Center, MS 8000 sq ft of office and computer spaces leased from NASA– Offices Norfolk, VA; University of Hawaii; Charleston, SC; Louisiana State University;

San Diego, CA

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• Acquire environmental data from U.S. and foreign sources

• Preserve the Nation’s environmental data assets

• Assemble data into easy to use long-term data sets

• Provide access to environmental data for business, federal, and science users

• Describe the environment; NOAA Satellites and Information Service scientists played key roles in the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change process

Unique Role of NOAA’s National Data Centers

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Success of data management enterprise is judged by its usefulness

to current and future users

Weather and Hazards

ClimateOceans

Defense

Agriculture

Transportation

Industry

NOAA data and information are used for …

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• The NODC manages the world's largest collection of publicly available oceanographic data. NODC holdings include in situ and remotely sensed physical, chemical, and biological oceanographic data from coastal and deep ocean areas. These were originally collected for a variety of operational and research missions by U.S. Federal agencies, including the Department of Defense (primarily the U.S. Navy); by State and local government agencies; by universities and research institutions; and private industry. NODC data holdings extend back over one hundred years, and the volume is expected to grow exponentially as new ocean observing systems are deployed.

• Through NODC archive and access services these ocean data are being reused to answer questions about climate change, ocean phenomena, and management of coastal and marine resources, marine transportation, recreation, national security, and natural disasters. Another significant user community is Education, where these data and information products help teach each new generation of students about the oceans. Requests for oceanographic data and information have increased each year since the Center was established in 1961.

• A significant percentage of the oceanographic data held by NODC is foreign. NODC acquires foreign data through direct bilateral exchanges with other countries, and through the facilities of the World Data Center for Oceanography, Silver Spring, which is collocated with and operated by NODC.

• Under NODC leadership, the Global Data Archeology and Rescue (GODAR) project has grown into a major international program sponsored by the Inter-governmental Oceanographic Commission. GODAR is a comprehensive effort to locate, rescue, quality control, and disseminate historical global ocean profile data for use by the climate and global change research community.


Data Holdings

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Monitoring the State of the Coast & Global Ocean: World Ocean Database (WOD) The WOD is the largest collection of oceanographic profile data available internationally. It contains data from 93 countries and observations back to the 1700’s as well as current observations.

NODC provides unparalleled global ocean information to assess coastal resources, ocean health and its role in climate change

NODC: QUALITY CONTROL, RESEARCH, ANALYSIS

From Climate to Ecosystem Management: Sea Surface Temperature from SatellitesUsed in vast array of applications, from marine protected areas to climate science to recreational fishing to human health.

Warming of the Oceans

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NODC: Discovery, Access, and Integration

NODC supports the World Ocean Database (WOD), which is the world’s largest collection of ocean vertical profile data. The WOD contains profiles dating back to the 19th century and includes data from over 20 variables such as temperature, oxygen, nutrients, plankton, and tracers. The WOD also includes historical data recovered as part of the IOC/IODE Global Oceanographic Data Archaeology and Rescue project. The WOD is widely used for ocean climate diagnostic analyses, for long-term ocean data assimilations in numerical models, and for comparisons with satellite data. http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/WOD05/pr_wod05.html

The World Ocean Atlas (WOA) is a set of objectively analyzed (1° grid) climatological fields of in situ temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, Apparent Oxygen Utilization (AOU), percent oxygen saturation, phosphate, silicate, and nitrate at standard depth levels for annual, seasonal, and monthly compositing periods for the world ocean. It also includes associated statistical fields of observed oceanographic profile data

interpolated to standard depth levels on both 1° and 5° grids.

http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/WOA05/pr_woa05.html

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NODC: Discovery, Access, and Integration

http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/GTSPP/gtspp-home.html

NODC maintains the global database of temperature and salinity data as a result of NODC participation in the Global Temperature – Salinity Profile Program (GTSPP).

Other NODC data sets include the Marine Environmental Buoy Database, which holds wind, wave and other marine data collected by the NOAA National Data Buoy Center (NDBC).

http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/BUOY/buoy.html

The Coastal Water Temperature Guide (CWTG) displays near-real time temperatures from NOAA’s National Ocean Service (NOS) tidal stations and Physical Oceanographic Real-Time System (PORTS), as well as temperatures from NOAA’s NDBC moored buoys. The CWTG also displays average monthly water temperatures.

http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/dsdt/cwtg/index.html

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NODC: Coastal Data Management

• Regional Ecosystem Data Management (REDM)

• Metadata development (semantic search and ontologies)

• Data discovery, mining, access, transport, archive, entry tools, and collaborative web tools

• Liaison Officers / Regional Approach

• Wide constituent base, customer service and user outreach

• Biological data considerations

• Geospatial enablement and visualization, e.g., ARC GIS and Google map

• Data integration, fusion and partnerships

Key focus “comprehensive end-to-end data management for the coastal environment”

National Coastal Data Development Center (NCDDC) Activities

http://www.ncddc.noaa.gov/

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NODC: Archive for Ocean Information

NOAA Photo LibraryThousands of un-copyrighted photos freely available for public use

Climate Database Modernization Project

Preserve/Access to historical data

Underwater Video as Data

http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/

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Earth System Monitor

NODC puts out a quarterly publication called “The Earth System Monitor”. This publication reports on NOAA environmental data and information programs, projects, and activities. [email protected]

Automatic notification of new issues by RSS feeds.

www.nodc.noaa.gov/ESM

mailto:[email protected]

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National Oceanographic Data CenterUnderstanding Our Coasts and Oceans