British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC)

European Directory of Marine Environmental Data (EDMED)

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 23:40:00 +0000

On behalf of the SeaDataNet community the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) announce the release of a new display interface for the European Directory of Marine Environmental Data (EDMED) version 1.0. EDMED is searchable via either the SeaDataNet or BODC web sites.

Common seals on Scottish shores ©

What is EDMED?

EDMED is a comprehensive reference to the marine datasets and collections held within European research laboratories. It provides marine scientists, engineers and policy makers with a simple mechanism for data discovery.

Its origins date back to 1991 and it has undergone various revisions under the SEA-SEARCH and SeaDataNet initiatives. It has established itself as a European standard for indexing and searching datasets relating to the marine environment.

It covers a wide range of disciplines, for example

marine meteorology and atmospheric chemistry
physical, chemical and biological oceanography
human impact on the environment
fisheries and aquaculture
coastal and estuarine studies
marine geology and geophysics

EDMED catalogues datasets, irrespective of their format. Entries describe

digital databases or files
analogue records — paper charts, hard-copy tabulations
photographs and videos
geological samples
biological specimens

Directory entries are prepared by institutes and collated nationally. These national directories are combined to provide a single centralised system managed by BODC.

New National Oceanography Centre Director appointed.

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:33:00 +0000

The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) wishes to welcome Professor Edward Hill as the new Director of our host laboratory, the NERC's National Oceanography Centre (NOC). He takes up his new role with immediate effect and we are looking forward to working with him.

Professor Edward Hill ©

NOC was formed on 01 April 2010 by bringing together into a single institution the NERC-managed activity at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) and the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (POL) in Liverpool.

Professor Hill, the former director of NOCS, was selected to lead the new centre following an open recruitment and selection process. Professor Andrew Willmott, the former director of POL, will be a key member of the senior leadership team for NOC.

NOC will work in close partnership with the wider marine science community to create the integrated research capability needed to tackle the big environmental issues facing the world. Research priorities will include the oceans' role in climate change, sea level change and the future of the Arctic Ocean.

BODC joins the SeaDataNet Virtual Data System

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:04:00 +0000

The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC), with an initial contribution of more than 10,000 data series, has joined 24 other SeaDataNet partners actively providing data through the SeaDataNet Virtual Data System. The system is based on an index, the Common Data Index (CDI), which is populated with ISO19115-based metadata records to describe data stored in either netCDF or a simple ASCII format.

SeaDataNet partners in Europe ©

The CDI is searchable through a portal interface, which provides a range of filtering options to identify data (profile, time series or trajectory) of interest that may be added to a 'shopping trolley' for subsequent delivery.

Most data in the system are freely available under the terms and conditions of the SeaDataNet licence but some may require negotiation with the data owners before they can be released. User registration, which includes agreeing to the SeaDataNet licence, is mandatory.

The SeaDataNet partnership brings together 49 major European institutes and marine data centres from 35 countries in and around Europe. These include

40 National Oceanographic Data Centres and Satellite Data Centres — representing the backbone of the marine data and information infrastructure
Research laboratories and modelling centres — experts in the development of value-added products
Four International Organisations

They manage large sets of data, originating from their own institutes and from other parties in their country, using a variety of data management systems and configurations.

Oceanology International 2010

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:46:00 +0000

The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) will be participating in the forthcoming Oceanology International event (Oi10). This takes place from 09-11 March 2010 at ExCeL London, the international exhibition and conference centre in London’s Docklands.

Oceanology International is the world’s premier meeting place for the marine science and ocean technology community. Exhibits will include the latest innovations from a huge selection of marine technology suppliers, and the event will also include a conference, visiting vessels and live demonstrations.

BODC stand at OI 2008.©

BODC will have its own stand (L250), in the ‘Next generation UK marine science’ grouping. We will focus on

Online data search and delivery
Latest projects e.g. GEOTRACES
End-to-end data management

Come and visit us and pick up a BODC brochure, a free GEBCO poster (showing the GEBCO world map) and, new for 2010, a BODC badge!

Download a floorplan of the stands at Oi10 (751 KB)

BODC request (ASCII) format — your opinion

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:15:00 +0000

Data standardisation, in terms of both parameters and file format, is essential in professional data management.

BODC distributes data in a variety of standard formats. One of these, our BODC request (ASCII) format, has been in existence since the early 1980s. It comprises several lines of fixed-length header information (basic metadata) followed by the data cycles (and associated quality control flags) listed one per line.

BODC request (ASCII) format — change required ©

Until now we have refrained from changing this standard, as we were aware that our regular users had developed code for automatic data handling. Increasingly, however, the header design is limiting the information we need to present as well as being out of sync with standards elsewhere.

As part of our continuing commitment to improve our service to the marine community we feel that now is the time to consider a major update to our ASCII data format and we would value your opinion.

Such a change may cause inconvenience so we want to provide you with an opportunity to comment before we embark on an update. We would be pleased to hear your comments. When contacting us, please include information on the software you regularly use with this data format. This will help us tailor the design change to your needs.

New National Oceanography Centre (NOC) covers marine science from the coast to the deep ocean

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:38:00 +0000

A new, national research organisation that will work in partnership with the UK marine research community to deliver integrated marine science and technology from the coast to the deep ocean goes live from 1 April this year.

The National Oceanography Centre (NOC) will be formed by bringing together into a single institution NERC-managed activity at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) and the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (POL) in Liverpool.

The NOC will work in close partnership with the wider marine science community to create the integrated research capability needed to tackle the big environmental issues facing the world. Research priorities will include the oceans' role in climate change, sea level change and the future of the Arctic Ocean.

Integrated research — to tackle the big environmental issues facing the world. ©

A major element of the new approach will see the designation of a set of Partners of the NOC — comprising research institutes and key university groups — working collaboratively to support world-class strategic research, technology development and training the scientists of the future. Together with a wider group of Associates, these organisations will form the NOC Association, sharing in the delivery of a community developed strategy for marine science.

The NOC will have a key role in providing national capability to meet the needs of the whole UK marine research community including Royal Research Ships, deep submersibles and advanced ocean technologies. It will also be home to the global mean sea level data archive, the UK’s sea level monitoring system for flood warning and climate change, the national archive of subsea sediment cores and the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC).

How does this affect BODC?

As a national facility for storing and distributing marine data this initiative provides a strong framework to further our commitment to act for the entire community. We provide a resource for science, education, government and industry.

We are working hard to improve our data services and the way in which you can access and download data and information from our web site. For example, there are almost 68,000 data series available online from the National Oceanographic Database (NODB) 'online shopping' facility, with the number typically increasing at about 1,500 a month. This opens the way to the secure delivery of BODC's data holdings via various external data portals.

Open Service Network for Marine Environmental Data (NETMAR)

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:24:00 +0000

The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) is participating in the Open Service Network for Marine Environmental Data (NETMAR) programme, which will help provide a framework for marine environment data portal harmonisation and interoperability across Europe.

The objective is to provide a software toolkit for building data portals in a consistent manner. The toolkit will be developed through the use of emerging web standards, such as chained Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Services.

An example of a service chain ©

The end product will be configurable by user communities interested in developing a data portal and will offer search, download and integration tools. Further processing of data will also be available in order to provide derived products suitable for decision making in the marine environment community.

NETMAR is a European Union Framework 7 funded programme, which will bring together seven organisations from four countries to achieve its goal. It starts in February 2010.

What is our role?

In order to make the resulting portals truly interoperable, NETMAR requires a detailed definition of the services being called and the data requested. This will be achieved through the development of a multi-domain and multilingual ontology of environmental data and information services, to allow searches across human language and scientific domains.

BODC, building on the experience of the Enabling Parameter Discovery and NERC DataGrid (NDG) projects, will be involved in the development of these semantic web ontologies.

This will allow 'smart discovery' when searching for data. For example, searching on the word 'precipitation' or 'précipitation' in a data portal would return all data labelled with, say 'rain', 'pluie', 'snow' or 'neige'.

New GEBCO bathymetric grids released

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:47:00 +0000

Announcing new releases

A new release of the GEBCO_08 Grid is now available to download — it includes version 2.23 of the International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean (IBCAO).
A 'Source Identifier' Grid to accompany the GEBCO_08 Grid is also available. This describes the GEBCO_08 Grid — identifying which grid cells are based on bathymetric soundings or grids and which contain predicted depth values.

The GEBCO_08 Grid overlain by the 'Source Identifier' Grid ©

The General Bathymetric Chart of the Ocean (GEBCO) community aims to provide the most authoritative, publicly-available bathymetry for the world's oceans. BODC maintain and distribute gridded bathymetric data sets on behalf of the GEBCO community. These are

The GEBCO One Minute Grid — a global one arc-minute grid, largely based on the most recent set of bathymetric contours contained within the GEBCO Digital Atlas. Released in 2003 and updated in 2008.
The GEBCO_08 Grid — a 30 arc-second interval global terrain model, largely generated by combining quality-controlled ship depth soundings with predicted depths between the sounding points guided by satellite-derived gravity data. Released in January 2009.

You may opt to download data for a user-defined area or the complete global file(s).

'Online shopping' for data

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:34:00 +0000

In line with our goal to provide direct access and online delivery to all data holdings, BODC announces a major enhancement to our data request service.

The new release of the 'All data series' facility now provides online delivery for data (~ 60,000 series) held in the National Oceanographic Database (NODB). This encompasses physical, geophysical, chemical and biological measurements.

'Shopping' for data ©

The enhancements enable

'anonymous' searching — search prior to registration or log in.
'online shopping' — add data to a basket and check out your request.
extra choice in data file formats.
secure access control — authentication and authorisation.
auto-delivery of approximately 40,000 data series to academic users, with around 12,500 accessible to everyone.
auto-delivery of restricted data series to users with the correct credentials.
user request tracking and an auto-download facility.

This opens the way to the secure delivery of BODC's data holdings via various external data portals. A demonstration of the new functionality is available for you to view.

We are committed to improving our data services and your experience of our web site. Work is continuing to bring this functionality to our other data facilities and to enable online access to additional data.

Introducing single log in

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:16:00 +0000

As part of our continuing commitment to improve our data services and your experience on our web site, we have upgraded our data applications to introduce a single log in.

A single log in the sand! ©

How does this work?

Once you have logged in you will be free to navigate around the BODC web site, entering all data delivery areas without the need to log in again. This can be achieved by either

Using the link provided on the top right-hand side of our web pages
Using the link presented at each of the data delivery applications

Some restricted areas require that you have additional permissions; should you encounter one of these you will be informed whether your account satisfies the entrance requirements.

After a period of inactivity, to keep your account secure, your session will time out and access will be closed. You can also opt to close your session at any time, using the log out link presented at the top right-hand side of our web pages.

This completes a major step towards our aim of making all of our data holdings accessible online.

Iceland to Scotland: crossing the Nordic Seas gateway

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:31:00 +0000

Two BODC data scientists (Mark Hebden and Julia Calderwood) participated on both legs of the RRS Discovery 340 cruise in the North East Atlantic Ocean.

Mark compiling quality metadata ©

On the first leg, between Iceland and Scotland, they joined colleagues from the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) and the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) to monitor the Atlantic waters flowing north towards the Arctic Ocean. This work is performed annually under the Extended Ellett Line project; an ocean monitoring initiative that dates back to 1975.

The second leg of the cruise, around Western Scotland, examined how stratification and turbulent mixing are influenced by shelf topography, and the consequences for pelagic and benthic biogeochemical processes. This study was performed by scientists at the Scottish Association for Marine Science, with Oceans 2025 funding.

Mark and Julia were onboard RRS Discovery to assist with the sampling programmes, and to compile quality metadata records.

For more information about life onboard this research cruise, see the RRS Discovery 340 cruise blog.

A new look for oceannet.org!

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:06:00 +0000

The Marine Environmental Data and Information Network (MEDIN) web site (http://www.oceannet.org/) has been relaunched with a new look and added features.

The new look MEDIN (oceannet.org) web site ©

What is MEDIN

MEDIN is a partnership of UK organisations, both public and private sector, committed to improving access to marine data. It sits alongside its sibling working group the Underwater Sound Forum (USF) and both groups report directly to the Marine Science Coordination Committee (MSCC).

MEDIN are establishing a network of marine data archive centres (DACs) to provide secure long-term storage for marine data. This network will provide the capability to upload and retrieve data. The OceanNET web site provides details on how, and to whom, data should be submitted.

For ease of discovery and use of data, standards are essential and MEDIN has an agreed process, involving key stakeholders, to approve standards for use by MEDIN partners. The OceanNET web site provides access to these agreed standards, along with MEDIN meeting details, articles and a range of publications for download or hardcopy request.

Users can subscribe to MEDIN’s e-newsletter, Marine Data News, as well as downloading Adobe PDF documents of past issues.

BODC upgrades network infrastructure

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:06:00 +0000

The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) has recently upgraded its network infrastructure to cope with the demand on services. This investment will allow us to maintain our high standards in web data delivery, cater for the 30% year on year increase of registered web users and help us achieve our aim of making all of our data holdings accessible via the web.

Our new load balancer with associated cabling ©

Our recent network upgrade provides

dual fibre-based Gigabit connections to the internet for maximum resilience and redundancy for our web sites and services
load balancing between our web servers with Gigabit connections to the internet and back office application servers, giving a tenfold increase in available bandwidth
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL/https) connections to protect your personal data as it traverses the web
protection from Denial of Service (DoS) attacks

Our Information Technology (IT) infrastructure (servers and networks) are maintained by our local IT support group (POL Computing). In turn, POL Computing are supported by NERC's IT Solutions & Services (iTSS) who provide specialised expertise.

We will continue to work closely with these groups to maintain and develop the IT infrastructure we depend on as part of our commitment to improving access to our data holdings and web services.

GDA Software Interface version 2.12 released

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Mon, 11 May 2009 09:22:00 +0000

Version 2.12 of GEBCO Digital Atlas (GDA) software interface has been released. This supersedes previous versions and is available for download by existing GDA users, along with instructions on how to install and use the software.

The GDA is a reference source for the bathymetry of the world's oceans. It contains a global set of digital bathymetric contours, coastlines and gridded bathymetric data sets. It is accompanied by a software interface, which allows the user to display, query and export data from the various GDA data sets.

Displaying bathymetry data through the GDA software interface. ©

Version 2.12 of the software interface includes the following additional features

view and access data from both GEBCO gridded bathymetric data sets, the GEBCO One Minute Grid and GEBCO_08 Grid
export the gridded data in an ASCII format suitable for conversion to an ESRI raster file using ESRI data conversion software

The GDA is currently distributed on CDROM and does not include the GEBCO_08 Grid. An updated DVD product is planned for release shortly to include both gridded data sets.

BODC celebrates 40 years

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:29:00 +0000

This month marks BODC's 40th birthday. Our history began in April 1969 when the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) created the British Oceanographic Data Service (BODS), located at the National Institute of Oceanography, Wormley, Surrey.

Over last the 40 years we have witnessed many changes; these include our name, location and organisational structure, the evolving nature of data collected by the science of oceanography and the technology we depend on.

However, our fundamental role as a national facility for preserving and distributing marine data has remained constant.

BODC celebrates 40 years. ©

The changes - a brief timeline

April 1969 — The British Oceanographic Data Service (BODS) created — primarily to handle hydrographic data.
1975 — BODS transfers to Bidston Observatory, Wirral as part of the newly formed Institute of Oceanographic Sciences. The National Oceanographic DataBank (NODB) is developed, a batch-based COnference on DAta SYstems Languages (CODASYL) system running on a Honeywell computer, located at their offices in Acton, London. Our Parameter Dictionary is born.
1976 — BODS is the focus of a high-level review of offshore industry requirements. As a result, BODS becomes the data banking section of the Marine Information and Advisory Service (MIAS). MIAS-DBS is funded by NERC and the Department of Energy and Industry. Its primary activity is to manage data collected by the UK Offshore Operators Association's (UKOOA) network of weather ships, oil rigs and large-scale data buoys.
1977 — A Honeywell 66/20 mainframe computer is installed at Bidston Observatory.
1979 — MIAS becomes involved in international initiatives designed to standardise data curation.
1980 — The Honeywell computer is upgraded to become a model 66 type 60B, with 512KB of memory, 1.3MB of disk storage and six magnetic tape drives.
1982 — The in-house transfer system is developed; data inventories are accessible via Fortran programs and data are quality assured using paper or microfiche plots.
1985 — We spend £5000, the equivalent of six months' Data Scientist salary at that time, to purchase our first personal computer.
1987 — The arrival of the IBM 4381 computer (costing £400,000 — with 7.5GB of disk storage) and the Oracle Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). We begin to develop in-house visualisation software on two Silicon Graphics workstations (costing £40,000 apiece) to aid quality assurance. Data are still archived onto magnetic tapes.
April 1989 — the MIAS-DBS is restructured and renamed BODC.
1989 — An 'end to end' approach, working alongside marine scientists during the lifetime of projects to ensure good data management practices, is developed during the first NERC Community Research Project, the North Sea Project. The NODB samples schema is designed to store discrete samples, such as biological and chemical data from water bottle rosette systems. Our involvement in international project data management begins. An extra 5GB of disk storage is purchased for the IBM 4281 computer.
1990 — Work begins at BODC to develop and maintain the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) Digital Atlas on behalf of the GEBCO community. Our Parameter Dictionary has expanded to contain around 5,000 parameters.
1992 — BODC adopt a UNIX system and data are archived in a Mass Store, a hierarchical storage system. BODC make data available to the marine community via its first CDROM product.
1993 — We undertake quality assurance responsibilities for UK Tide Gauge Network (DATARING) data.
1995 — Our first web presence.
1996 — During the year BODC service 1,035 customer requests for data and information.
2000 — The BODC web site is launched, providing online data catalogues and inventories of our data holdings. The additional functionality helps increase the number of annual requests to 4,644.
2002 — BODC develops formal partnerships with NERC’s marine research centres to encourage good data management practices.
2003 — Our Parameter Dictionary expands rapidly to almost 19,000 parameters.
2004 — We move to our current location, the Joseph Proudman Building, located on the University of Liverpool campus.
2005 — Our current web site is launched, providing expanded functionality.
2006 — The BODC Parameter Dictionary becomes available online through the NERC DataGrid Vocabulary server. Our online data request facilities are updated to include GIS map search facilities.
2007 — We complete an extensive modernisation of our visualisation and data handling software, enabling improved efficiency and portability, thereby enabling use by external users.
2008 — As part our role serving the national and international marine community we host and maintain twelve data portals and web sites.
2009 — Continual improvements to our web applications and functionality means that we now service ~100,000 requests for data and information per year. The next step is to provide an online 'shopping' facility allowing users to select data for auto-delivery from our entire data holdings.

Our continuing commitment

We are looking forward to meeting the challenging needs of marine data management in the future as data are precious; they are fundamental to the understanding of the processes that control our natural environment.

The data we hold helps provide answers to local questions or planet-wide issues, such as the prediction of the impact of global warming - something that not only affects us, but will also affect the quality of life of our children and grandchildren. The better we can predict these events, the better we can protect ourselves in the future.

GEBCO Grid display software v2.11 released

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 09:56:00 +0000

Version 2.11 of the GEBCO Grid display software is now available to download, free of charge under licence, for use with the GEBCO gridded bathymetric data sets. This release supersedes version 2.0, published in February 2009, and includes the following enhancements.

An option to export data from the GEBCO gridded bathymetric data sets in an ASCII form suitable for conversion (using ESRI data conversion software) to a raster file for use with ESRI ArcGIS products.
The ability to work with a read-only version of the source data file — this has proved useful in some cases where the software is used over a network.
A bug that caused the export of the GEBCO One Minute Grid to fail if the southernmost latitude of the selected area equalled 90°S has now been fixed.

Displaying South Atlantic bathymetry within the software. ©

The GEBCO Grid display software provides the means for displaying and accessing the data in simple ASCII formats as well as netCDF from

the GEBCO One Minute Grid — a global one arc-minute grid
the GEBCO_08 Grid — a global 30 arc-second grid

It has been developed by BODC to run on a PC running Microsoft Windows 95 or later and is controlled by a series of drop-down menus and toolbar buttons. Please note that the software is designed for use with the complete, global data files.

Find out more about the software and how to access it under licence.

GEBCO Grid display software

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 12:39:00 +0000

The GEBCO Grid display software is available to download, free of charge under license, for use with the GEBCO gridded bathymetric data sets. It provides the means for displaying and accessing the data from

the GEBCO One Minute Grid — a global one arc-minute grid
the GEBCO_08 Grid — a global 30 arc-second grid

Viewing GEBCO_08 using the GEBCO Grid display software. ©

It has been developed by the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) to run on a PC running Microsoft Windows 95 or later and is controlled by a series of drop-down menus and toolbar buttons. Please note that the software is designed for use with the complete, global data files available for download from BODC.

Features of the GEBCO Grid display software include

Display GEBCO's gridded bathymetric data sets on your PC screen, colour coded for depth/elevation.
Export data in an ASCII format or netCDF.
Choice of five map projections for display — Equidistant Cylindrical, Mercator, Miller Cylindrical, Lambert Cylindrical Equal-Area and Polar Stereographic.
Import your own file(s) of data points to display in the map area.
Select your geographic area of interest either by chart number, by latitude and longitude limits, or by an on-screen zoom box.

Exploring the ocean floor with Google Earth

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 10:30:00 +0000

If you could peer beneath the ocean waves and glimpse the seafloor far below, you would see deep basins, vast mountains chains and long trenches. This is known as bathymetry.

Understanding bathymetry helps us understand the rest of the planet as this landscape helps steer ocean currents that in turn affect climate change. It also influences hazards facing coastal communities, such as approaching tsunamis.

The General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) community has been working for many years to provide the most authoritative, publicly-available bathymetric data sets for the world’s oceans. The recently released GEBCO 30 arc-second bathymetric grid (GEBCO_08) has been used as a basis for the 3D model of the oceans within Google Earth 5.0, to allow us to view the underwater landscape.

The GEBCO_08 bathymetric grid has been developed using a combination of ship track soundings and satellite-derived gravity data.

The GEBCO_08 Grid and the GEBCO One Minute Grid are both available to download from the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC).

GEOTRACES International Data Assembly Centre

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:11:00 +0000

The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) announces the launch of the GEOTRACES International Data Assembly Centre (GIDAC) web site. This will provide access to

* GEOTRACES data
* information on past and future GEOTRACES cruises
* general information regarding data
* information about the GEOTRACES programme

GEOTRACES is an international programme that aims to improve our understanding of biogeochemical cycles and large-scale distribution of trace elements and their isotopes in the marine environment. The global field programme will run for at least a decade and will involve cruises, run by a variety of nations, in all ocean basins.

Although still in its infancy, the GEOTRACES programme's aim is to compile a global dataset for all key GEOTRACES parameters. This dataset will eventually be available to the wider science community in accordance with the GEOTRACES data policy.

Edward Mawji has been appointed the BODC coordinator. He will be working closely with the GEOTRACES scientists to establish common metadata and format protocols and will also be responsible for the quality control and secure archiving of data that will be collected during cruises.

GEBCO_08 bathymetric grid released

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:08:00 +0000

BODC maintain and make available global bathymetric data sets on behalf of the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) community.

GEBCO have released a new global bathymetric grid with 30 arc-second spacing — the GEBCO_08 Grid. This is now available for download alongside the GEBCO One Minute Grid. You may opt to download complete netCDF grid file(s) or a user defined area.

More about the GEBCO_08 Grid

The GEBCO_08 Grid was generated by combining quality-controlled ship depth soundings with interpolation between sounding points guided by satellite derived gravity data. It is a continuous terrain model for ocean and land with the land data largely derived from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM30) data set.

Although every effort has been made to reduce the number of errors in the data set, we expect that some grid artifacts will be found. It is currently a development product which will undergo periodic update. Should users identify grid artifacts we would be grateful for feedback.

GEBCO One Minute Grid version 2.0 released

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:48:00 +0000

The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) maintains and updates the GEBCO One Minute Grid on behalf of the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO) community. The One Minute Grid provides global bathymetry data on a one-arc-minute grid and is part of the GEBCO Digital Atlas.

Version 2.0 (released November 2008) is now available for download. You may opt to download the complete netCDF grid file or a user defined area. It includes updates for

The Arctic Ocean from version 2.23 of the International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean (IBCAO)
Shallow water areas around India, the Korean Peninsula and South Africa

Further information is available in the version 2.0 documentation

Later in 2008, GEBCO will be releasing a 30 arc-second interval global bathymetric grid. It has been generated by combining quality-controlled ship depth soundings with interpolation between sounding points guided by satellite-derived gravity data. It is a global terrain model for ocean and land with land data taken from the NASA Space Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM30) data set.

This data set will also be made available through the grid download application.

BODC participates in the HUMBOLDT project

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:02:00 +0000

The British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) is participating in the HUMBOLDT project, which will help provide a framework for geo data harmonisation and service integration across Europe.

The objective is to build and test tools to allow organisations to exchange data and information more easily, with the aim of enabling an improved response to disaster management.

More information is available from the BODC HUMBOLDT project pages.

What is BODC's role?

One of the key tasks within the HUMBOLDT project is to test the architecture and tools created. To achieve this objective various scenarios will be developed and applied under realistic conditions, for example: an oil spill in international waters.

BODC's involvement is in adapting an existing operational oil spill model. This is being carried out in collaboration with the National Centre for Ocean Forecasting and will use live feeds of ocean currents and weather provided by the Met Office.

The model will be used to test the software components developed by the HUMBOLDT team in other work packages, focusing on interoperability between oil spill models, thus allowing data and information to be exchanged easily in the event of an international incident.

Rothera Time Series (RaTS) data is now available from the BODC

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:43:00 +0000

Through our partnership with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the Rothera Oceanographic and Biological Time Series (RaTS) data set is now accessible via the British Oceanographic Data Centre's (BODC) online series request facility.

Currently, over ten years of CTD data are presented. In a few months, moored current meter data will also be made available.

Figure 1 - Rothera Time Series off western coast of the Antarctic Peninsula in the Marguerite Bay.
Figure 2 - A close up of the sampling sites in Marguerite Bay, Antarctica. ©

More about RaTS

The RaTS programme is funded by NERC. It involves the long-term monitoring of a nearshore marine environment in the Antarctic. Its aims are to

aid interpretation of the local ecology
test a series of hypotheses concerning interactions between surface and deep waters and the environmental forcing of the nearshore environment

Sampling began in January 1997, at a site (Site 1) approximately 4 km from the coast of the BAS station at Rothera. Weather and ice permitting, an upper open hydrographic cast and discrete water sample (at a depth of 15 m) are collected every fifth day during summer and every seventh day during winter.

If Site 1 is inaccessible then the secondary station, Site 2, is occupied; if neither are accessible then a water sample is collected near the wharf at Rothera (Site 3) but no hydrography cast is taken.

Argo float data products

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:20:00 +0000

BODC present an animation of the Forecasting Ocean Assimilation Model (FOAM) ¼° Antarctic output images for potential temperature, salinity and velocity.

Argo float data are assimilated into the FOAM model at the Met Office and provide a significant positive impact. Experiments have shown that the addition of these data reduce error by almost 30%, enabling more accurate forecasts.

Data supply chain

On surfacing, a float transmits the data collected via satellites to a receiving station.
Data are downloaded, quality controlled, encoded and delivered on a daily basis to the Global Telecommunications System (GTS), thus enabling them to be included in various meteorological and oceanographic models.
Data are assimilated in to the Forecasting Ocean Assimilation Model (FOAM) at the Met Office.
FOAM ¼° Antarctic model output images of potential temperature, salinity and velocity are supplied by the Met Office to BODC at monthly intervals.
An animation of the FOAM ¼° Antarctic model output images is presented.

Argo data

Argo, a worldwide programme involving over 30 countries, was established in 2000 to provide regular measurements from previously data-sparse areas throughout ice-free deep-ocean areas to improve our understanding of ocean systems. A global network of over 3000 active profiling floats was achieved in November 2007.

These specialised floats are able to descend and ascend through the water column by changing their buoyancy. As the float rises to the sea surface, it collects temperature, salinity and pressure measurements. The data are vital for monitoring ocean temperature - a key factor in climate change.

BODC act as the data centre for UK floats in the Argo programme, regardless of their location. We also act as the Regional Centre for the Southern Ocean in collaboration with the Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia.

Seals aid climate modelling

enquiries@bodc.ac.uk (British Oceanographic Data Centre) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:21:00 +0000

Oceanographic data collected by seals as part of the ‘Marine Mammals Exploring the Oceans – Pole to Pole’ (MEOP) project are now quickly made available to climate modellers.

State of the art instrumentation (CTD tags) developed by the Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU) are attached to over 150 individual seals worldwide. These instruments record the temperature and salinity profile of the water column as the seals dive. On surfacing, the data are transmitted via satellites to SMRU.

Through our liaison partnership, the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) have been working with SMRU to make these data available via the Global Telecommunications System (GTS). We are responsible for downloading, encoding and delivering data to the GTS on a daily basis. This allows the near real-time data collected by the seals to be incorporated into various meteorological and oceanographic models.

More about MEOP

MEOP, an international project, started in July 2007 as part of the fourth International Polar Year (IPY). It involves tagging deep-diving seal species to provide data on their location and behaviour, and information relating to the waters they inhabit.

The project's aims are two-fold

to gain a better understanding of the behaviour of seals
to collect unique and valuable oceanographic data from logistically difficult Polar areas

It builds on the previous projects, Southern Elephant Seals as Oceanographic Samplers (SEaOS) and the South Atlantic Variability Experiment (SAVEX) which sought to gain a better understanding of how elephant seals interact with their physical environment.

bodc, nerc, oceanographic data, seals, smru