The CLIVAR and Carbon Hydrographic Data Office
James Swift (Director), Steve Diggs,Justin Fields, Jerry Kappa, Danie Kinkade, Carolina Berys, Sarilee Anderson, Andrew Barna, Roxanne Lee, Jessicah Morison, David Muus, Susan Piercy, and Matthew Shen. UCSD Scripps Institution of Oceanography, 9500 Gilman Dr., Mail Code 0214, La Jolla, CA 92093-0214, USA. Email: .
The CLIVAR and Carbon Hydrographic Data Office (CCHDO) at the UCSD Scripps Institution of Oceanography has the fundamental mission of being the repository and distribution center for global CTD, hydrographic, carbon, and tracer data of the highest quality and utility. These data are a product of WOCE, CLIVAR, the International Ocean Carbon Coordination Project (IOCCP), and other oceanographic research programs - past, present and to come. Whenever possible the CCHDO provides these data in three widely-used formats: WHP-Exchange (the preferred format), original WOCE format, and WOCE netCDF. The CCHDO seeks to assure that these data and their associated documentation are prepared and made readily available for immediate research and education uses, and that these data have a long service life. The CCHDO's primary window to the research community is via its web site <
The CCHDO is an intermediary between investigators carrying out CTD/hydrographic field work and the research/education community, and it passes public data to the NODC/WDC-A archive. At the CCHDO, the CTD, hydrographic, ocean carbon, and tracer data used in ocean circulation and climate studies are brought together, verified, assembled with relevant documentation, and carefully prepared for dissemination and archive. In addition the CCHDO serves as a proactive force in the hydrographic data community, to promote appropriate methodologies, applicable community standards, communications, and data compatibility.
CCHDO functions connected with this are
locating data and arranging for data and documentation transfer to the CCHDO,
checking all data and headers for errors and correcting those errors,
merging bottle data parameters from disparate sources,
moving the data into tight agreement with well-specified community data formats,
bringing together, organizing, and preserving the information about the data necessaryto understand and use them, and
providing for widespread distribution of the data and archive of the data.
The WHPO (first at WHOI, and then at SIO from 1997) supported these key functions for the WOCE CTD/hydrographic/tracer data. In 2003 the WHPO was invited to carry out its functions for CLIVAR and the International Ocean Carbon Coordination Project (IOCCP), at which point international groups asked that its name be changed to the CCHDO to improve its international recognition and acknowledge its new associations. The CCHDO is becoming less WOCE-centric, for example now including data from the Arctic Ocean and Nordic Seas. The CCHDO also acts as a conduit to the Coriolis center for rapid-release CTD data used for Argo float salinity correction.
CLIVAR and the IOCCP - and some regionally-focused and process oriented studies - have generated significant volumes of WOCE-like data, emphasizing establishment of temporal variability in key ocean regions over annual, decadal, and century time scales. Simply put, current and future oceanographic research demands data which are carefully collected, vigorously vetted, and unambiguously documented and preserved.
In addition, it continues to be of value to have good communications between the CCHDO and the data providers ahead of cruises to provide resources and advice which will help those at sea to achieve the data quality and reporting standards that will best meet long term community needs. This has worked well for cruises of the US Global Ocean Carbon and Repeat Hydrography Program (see < for information about the program).