Global Temperature-Salinity Profile Program
Encyclopedia
The Global Temperature-Salinity Profile Program (GTSPP) is a cooperative international project that seeks to develop and maintain a global ocean Temperature-Salinity resource with up-to-date and high quality data.
Purpose
Making global measurements of ocean temperature and salinity (T-S) quickly and easily accessible to users is the primary goal of the GTSPP. Both real time data transmitted over the Global Telecommunications SystemGlobal telecommunications system
The Global Telecommunications System is a global network for the transmission of meteorological data from weather stations, satellites and numerical weather prediction centres....
(GTS), and delayed-mode data received by the NODC are acquired and incorporated into a continuously managed database.
International contributors
Several countries contribute to the GTSPP. They are:- AustraliaAustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
- CanadaCanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
- FranceFranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
- GermanyGermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
- JapanJapanJapan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
- RussiaRussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
- United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Canada's Marine Environmental Data Service (MEDS) leads the project, and has the operational responsibility to gather and process the real-time data. MEDS accumulates real-time data from several sources via the GTS. They check the data for several types of errors, and remove duplicate copies of the same observation before passing the data on to NODC. The quality control
Quality control
Quality control, or QC for short, is a process by which entities review the quality of all factors involved in production. This approach places an emphasis on three aspects:...
procedures used in GTSPP were developed by MEDS, who also coordinated the publication of those procedures through the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission
Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission
The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission was established by resolution 2.31 adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO. It first met in Paris at Unesco Headquarters from 19 to 27 October 1961. Initially, 40 States became members of the Commission.The IOC is composed of its Member States ,...
(IOC).
The U.S. National Oceanographic Data Center
National Oceanographic Data Center
The National Oceanographic Data Center is one of the national environmental data centers operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The main NODC facility is located in Silver Spring, Maryland and is made up of five divisions...
(NODC) performs four functions for the GTSPP:
- Maintains the global database of temperature and salinity data and provides online access to the data.
- Adds realtime data supplied by MEDS to the database.
- Processes delayed mode copies of data by performing the same data quality tests as MEDS, then adds data to the database.
- Prepares monthly data sets and transfers them by network to participants in the U.S., Australia and France, as well as to requestors.
In addition to MEDS and NODC, three science centers participate in the project by independently evaluating the delayed-mode data sets for the Indian
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...
, Pacific
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
, and Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
s. Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation is the national government body for scientific research in Australia...
(CSIRO), the Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, is one of the oldest and largest centers for ocean and earth science research, graduate training, and public service in the world...
(SIO), and NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) perform this function as Data Assembly Centers for the World Ocean Circulation Program, which the GTSPP supports.
Infrastructure
- Global Telecommunication System (GTS): Carries real-time data from ships and buoys in support of the IOC/WMO Integered Global Ocean Services System (IGOSS).
- IODE Data Centers: Contribute data, monitor the project, and distribute products. These are national oceanographic data centers which participate in the International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) System of the International Oceanographic Commission.
- Continuously Managed Database (CMD): Maintains the up-to-date global temperature-salinity data, replaces near real-time records with higher quality delayed-mode records as they are received, and creates and distributes copies of the data on CD-ROMCD-ROMA CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
and other media. - WOCE Data Assembly Centers: Perform scientific quality control through data analysis, and issues products and predictions based on the global temperature-salinity data set.
GTSPP documents
- GTSPP Real-time Quality Control Manual (IOC Manuals and Guides #22)
- AOML Manual
- CSIRO "Cookbook"
- Data Quality Flags
- QC Intercomparison
External links
- Global Temperature-Salinity Profile Program (GTSPP)
- Public access to real-time data from the GTSPP Continuously Managed Database
- Public access to best-copy data from the GTSPP Continuously Managed Database
- Public access to Global Temperature-Salinity Data RSS
- Emphasis of Temperature-Salinity on environement