World Ocean Database and WODSelect: a nexus between aggregation, dissemination, and utilization of ocean profile data

The World Ocean Database (WOD), a product of the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), aggregates millions of historical and recent oceanographic profiles from thousands of cruises, projects, and scientists. WOD organizes the profiles in a uniform format and applies consistent quality control, and so is a useful and valuable resource for ocean and climate studies. WODSelect is a subsetting and delivery tool for WOD’s ocean profile data. Geographically distributed instances of WODselect serve data to the community, connecting researchers and projects that collect and submit data, and the user community that consumes data. WODselect serves a key access function within the Marine Climate Data System (MCDS). In the future, WOD and WODselect are working and build a robust system of machine-to-machine and machine-to-human access that preserves the quality information vital to best use. To realize this goal, WOD is transitioning to community standard data and metadata formats, internationally-accepted quality control procedures, and an international network of federated nodes to facilitate access and reuse of ocean profile data to support scientific research and decision-making.