NOAA NATIONAL CLIMATIC DATA CENTER'S MARINE DATA SERVICES: HISTORY, CHALLENGES AND VISION

NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) archives global surface marine data and integrated marine products. Data from tethered and drifting buoys, ships and satellites are archived and distributed. In addition, a comprehensive data rescue program is serving to digitize data that either pre-date the digital era, or more recent data that are not transmitted in near real- time. A comprehensive and coordinated effort is underway to integrate marine products and provide data interoperability using innovative data management and delivery methods. Continuing challenges in the marine data environment include a wide variety of data formats, metadata availability and design, and sparse or temporally and spatially disparate network coverage. Thoughtful design in our data services will aim to address issues of format inconsistencies and work is underway to increase metadata availability. A focused effort is also in place to digitize data to fill in temporal and spatial gaps in marine data. High quality in-situ data should be widely available to compare to satellite observations and this will be of increasing use in the coming years and decades as more sophisticated satellite observation platforms are launched.