The World Data Service for Oceanography, reopening its doors to the world observing community

Abstract:

The World Data Service for Oceanography (WDSO), part of the World Data System (WDS), is hosted at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). We focus on helping ensure the open, timely, and unrestricted access and use of public scientific oceanographic data. It became a WDS regular member in 2014. In May 2020 WDSO obtained recertification through the CoreTrustSeal; a core-level certification based on Core Trustworthy Data Repositories Requirements catalogue and procedures. Data received at WDSO are immediately made openly available online to the world scientific community through the NCEI data servers which include data services such as the THREDDS Data Server. The vision of the WDSO is to help develop a sustainable world informed by open access oceanographic data. There are key challenges in developing such a global strategy. For example, access to multi-sectoral ocean data and information is one of the top priorities of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021-2030. One of the ways WDSO provides access to data is via the World Ocean Database (WOD). WOD now has over 17million oceanographic profiles of essential ocean variables and other parameters including temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, nutrients, dissolved inorganic carbon, alkalinity, pH, and ocean tracers. All of the WOD data are made available online without restrictions. WOD is the largest compilation of historical and modern oceanographic data and includes data from international programs such as SeaDataNet, Argo, CCHDO, etc. We would like to re-open our doors to scientists worldwide who want to share their data with the international community. We will ensure that proper attribution and provenance through metadata are provided to all data received at WDSO via Digital Object Identifiers (DOI). Data can be submitted by individual investigators and data stewards trough the NCEI data portal Send2NCEI (S2N) at https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/s2n/. S2N is an archiving tool that allows you to easily submit your data files and related for long term preservation, stewardship, and access. We thank all scientists and data managers worldwide for their data contributions that make possible the World Data Service for Oceanography. For questions please contact its Director, Hernan Garcia (Hernan.Garcia@noaa.gov).