Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

Science Rendezvous > 2009 Posters
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Observing System Monitoring Center: A Global Ocean Observing System For Climate

Nancy Auerbach¹,², David Froehlich1,², Ted Habermann², John Cartwright², John LaRocque², Steve Hankin³, Kevin O’Brien³, Kevin Kern⁴, Michelle Little⁴, Derrick Snowden⁵

¹Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, ²NOAA/National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC), ³Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, ⁴National Data Buoy Center, ⁵Office of Climate Observations

Information gleaned from a comprehensive global ocean observing system for climate may enable a clearer understanding of climate variability. The Observing System Monitoring Center (OSMC) project assists managers and scientists in monitoring a diverse, real-time, global, in-situ ocean observing system. The project aggregates multidimensional in-situ ocean measurements from a variety of platforms into a spatial database and provides tools to evaluate the coverage of the network in supporting ocean/climate state estimation, forecasting and research, as well as to monitor the health of the network itself. NGDC contributes expertise in spatial database design and management for the near-real-time data, as well as development of Web-based tools for monitoring and visualization.

These tools include interactive maps displaying observation data distribution (by platform and phenomenon), summary tables, and quality assessment of the ingested data. Future plans include expansion to allow the incorporation of new data providers and consumers through the use of open source geospatial tools such as feature server, and the implementation of standards such as the Sensor Observation Services specification and OpenDAP (Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol). The project is supported through National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Office of Climate Observation (OCO), and development is a joint, collaborative effort between the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL), the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC), and the National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC).