Global Temperature-Salinity Profile Program

>> Overview

The U.S. National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) maintains the global database of temperature and salinity data as a result of NODC participation in the Global Temperature – Salinity Profile Program (GTSPP). The GTSPP data are maintained in a relational database, the so called Continuously Managed Database (CMD), that is managed by commercial software on a UNIX workstation. Real-time data are added, as they arrive from Canada's Marine Environmental Data Service (MEDS) three times per week. Higher quality delayed mode data are now being quality controlled and added to the CMD. As these observations are added, the matching real-time data are tagged to avoid accepting two copies of the same data. The database makes it possible to quickly load and retrieve data, as well as statistics about the number of observations per geographic region, time period, ship, or data type. Other NODC roles include preparing monthly data sets and transferring them to participants in the U.S., Australia and France, as well as to other requesters and maintaining GTSPP files on line.