Global Temperature-Salinity Profile Program

>> What's GTSPP

The Global Temperature and Salinity Profile Program (GTSPP) is a cooperative international project to develop and maintain a global ocean Temperature-Salinity resource with data that are both up-to-date and of the highest quality. It is a joint World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) project.

Functionally, GTSPP reports to the Joint Commission on Oceanography and Marine Meteorology (JCOMM), a body sponsored by WMO and IOC and to the IOC’s International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange committee (IODE).

GTSPP played a key role in the WOCE Upper Ocean Thermal Data Assembly Centre and contributed to the final WOCE Data Resource DVD Version 3. The WOCE was ended in 2002, with some of its activities continuing through a new program, CLImate VARiability (CLIVAR). The GTSPP is also recognized by GOOS as an end-to-end data management system for the oceanographic community. Many nations contribute data to the GTSPP and without their contributions the project could not exist. Contributions to the data management portion of GTSPP are provided by Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the USA. Scientists and data managers in these countries contribute their time and resources to ensure the continuing functioning of the project.

Canada's Integrated Science Data Management (ISDM) led GTSPP until April 2007, when Dr. Charles Sun of the US NODC agreed to take over as chair of the program. ISDM has the operational responsibility to gather and process the real-time data. It accumulates real-time data from several sources via the GTS and checks the data for several types of errors, and removes duplicate copies of the same observation before passing the data on to the US National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC). The quality control procedures used in GTSPP were developed by ISDM, who also coordinated the publication of those procedures through the IOC.