GEBCO One Minute Grid version 2.0 released

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

Shallow water areas around the Korean Peninsula. ©

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

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.

HUMBOLDT and Europe ©

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.