BODC request (ASCII) format — your opinion

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

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)

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

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

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

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

1. Using the link provided on the top right-hand side of our web pages
2. 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

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.