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Program Management
A Steering Group including members from the IGOSS, IODE, and WOCE communities developed and implemented the GTSPP. GTSPP included the needs of the WOCE Upper Ocean Thermal Program which provided an immediate practical test of the program elements.
The GTSPP functions by actions undertaken by participants to achieve common goals agreed to at the meetings. Since it is a collection of volunteer organizations, adjustments are always needed to accommodate changes in levels of participation. These adjustments are made by current members taking on new roles or by recruiting new members. Over the life of the program there have always been of the order of 5 to 7 countries, and up to 10 to 12 organizations participating actively in operations.
The GTSPP takes advantage of a number of services and infrastructures available at both the international and national levels. The GTS is used for the transmission of oceanographic data from ships and buoys. The SOOP manages most of the ship based data collection. Many nations undertake both monitoring and research data collection programs at sea using ships, buoys, and floats. These data are made available to the GTSPP by the NODCs and RNODCs of the IODE system.
Users
Users supported include several communities as follows. Data are provided by networks in operational time frames and as global quarterly data sets on the Internet.
- numerical weather forecasting receives additional operational data from non GTS sources
- marine operations receives data in operational time frames for such operations as ship routing and fishing strategies
- seasonal to interannual forecasting receives higher quality and more timely data sets of temperature and salinity observations
- science and engineering receive higher quality and more timely data sets for strategic studies and design
Other Information
Scientific data quality assessment has been provided on yearly files by scientific institutions that participate in the GTSPP. Not only does this provide another level of assessment, but promotes the collaboration and exchange of expertise between scientific and data management organizations.
Data collection programs use ships of opportunity with expendable instruments, moored and drifting buoys, profiling floats, and research ships with high quality instrumentation. Most of these data are of course also provided on the GTS for numerical and short term forecasting of meteorological and oceanographic conditions. |
Data and Information Aspects
A feature and one of the primary goals of the GTSPP is to provide data of the highest possible quality to users as quickly as possible. The tool to achieve this goal is the continuously managed database (CMD). This database holds both real-time and delayed mode data. Where both the real-time and delayed mode copies of an observed profile exist from a particular location and time, the delayed mode is marked as the active copy in the CMD because it represents the highest resolution and highest quality data. The contents of the CMD are available upon request from the U.S. NODC. When the data are retrieved, the active copies only can be selected thus providing the best available data set at a given time.
Meta data standards have been established for the program. Collection of meta data begins with identification of the types of sensors and instruments that collected the data, includes details of the processing and QC (agreed, documented, and published), and also includes information on the software used and the organizations that have handled the data. Even the real time transmission formats have been altered to carry the necessary information on the collecting sensors and instruments.
Real Time Data Management: The data are managed by MEDS, Canada. The data are received daily and are processed through quality assessment and duplicates resolution software three times each week and transferred to the CMD in the U.S. NODC. Users who require fast availability to these data subscribe and receive the data from MEDS 3 times a week as well. There are both Canadian and international subscribers.
Monitoring of the general quality of the real-time data from the ships is done at MEDS. Ships that show quality problems in more than 10% of their reports are notified for corrective action. MEDS also monitors the data received by 4 different centers acquiring GTS data to identify routing problems and obtain a complete real time data set. Discrepancies noted in these monitoring reports are used to correct routing tables at the GTS centers. MEDS has also participated in special and routine monitoring projects of the GTS run by WMO.
Delayed Mode Data Management: The delayed mode data are managed by the U.S. NODC in a continuously updated database (CMD). This database holds, in the beginning, the real-time data from MEDS received three times per week. Delayed mode data includes the full resolution data from XBTs or CTDs from the ships, or fully processed and quality controlled data from the organizations that provided the real time low resolution data to the GTS. If a low resolution real time copy of the data are already in the CMD the better quality or higher resolution copy replaces the real time one as the active copy. |
