ICOADS: A Foundational Database with a new Release
William Angel, NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Asheville, NC, United States, Eric Freeman, National Centers for Environmental Information, Asheville, NC, United States, Scott D Woodruff, NOAA, National Centers for Environmental Information, Asheville, NC, United States, Steven J Worley, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, United States, Philip Brohan, Met Office Hadley center for Climate Change, Exeter, United Kingdom, Lydia Dumenil-Gates, Deutscher Wetterdienst, Hamburg, Germany, Elizabeth C Kent, National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, United Kingdom and Shawn R Smith, Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Tallahassee, FL, United States
Abstract:
The International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) offers surface marine data spanning the past three centuries and is the world's largest collection of marine surface in situ observations with approximately 300 million unique records from 1662 to the present in a common International Maritime Meteorological Archive (IMMA) format. Simple gridded monthly summary products (including netCDF) for 2° latitude x 2° longitude boxes back to 1800 and 1° x 1° boxes since 1960 are computed for each month. ICOADS observations made available in the IMMA format are taken primarily from ships (merchant, ocean research, fishing, navy, etc.) and moored and drifting buoys. Each report contains individual observations of meteorological and oceanographic variables, such as sea surface and air temperatures, winds, pressure, humidity, wet bulb, dew point, ocean waves and cloudiness. A monthly summary for an area box includes ten statistics (e.g. mean, median, standard deviation, etc.) for 22 observed and computed variables (e.g. sea surface and air temperature, wind, pressure, humidity, cloudiness, etc.). ICOADS is the most complete and heterogeneous collection of surface marine data in existence.
A major new historical update, Release 3.0 (R3.0), now in production (with availability anticipated in mid-2016) will contain a variety of important updates. These updates will include unique IDs (UIDs), new IMMA attachments, ICOADS Value-Added Database (IVAD), and numerous new or improved historical and contemporary data sources. UIDs are assigned to each individual marine report, which will greatly facilitate interaction between users and data developers, and affords record traceability. A new Near-Surface Oceanographic (Nocn) attachment has been developed to include oceanographic profile elements, such as sea surface salinity, sea surface temperatures, and their associated measurement depths. Additionally, IVAD allows a feedback mechanism of data adjustments which can be stored within each IMMA report. R3.0 includes near-surface ocean profile measurements from sources such as the World Ocean Database (WOD), Shipboard Automated Meteorological and Oceanographic System (SAMOS), as well as many others. An in-depth look at the improvements and the data inputs planned for R3.0 will be further discussed.
