Temperature profile and other historical data digitized for the World Data Center (WDC) Global Ocean Data Archaeology and Rescue (GODAR) project since 1993

In December 1992, the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC)/World Data Center (WDC) for Oceanography in Silver Spring, Maryland, presented a proposal for the Global Oceanographic Data Archaeology and Rescue (GODAR) Project at the 14th Session of the Committee on International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) where it was approved. The proposal was subsequently endorsed by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) -- the parent body of the IODE -- at the 17th IOC Assembly held in March 1993. At that time, it was further agreed that the WDC for Oceanography in Silver Spring, Maryland, would lead this project. The goal of GODAR was to increase the volume of historical oceanographic data available to climate change research and other researchers by locating ocean profile and plankton datasets not yet in digital form, digitizing these data, and ensuring their submission to national data centers and the World Data Center System. In addition, data on electronic media that are at risk of loss due to media degradation are also candidates for rescue.

Six regional GODAR meetings have been held since 1993 to bring together scientists and data managers to focus on oceanographic data resources in various areas of the world. In 1999, an "International GODAR Review Meeting" was held in Silver Spring to review project results and plan future work. More than 75 data managers and scientists from around the world attended this meeting, which concluded that the GODAR project should be continued and extended to include additional variables such as sea level and ocean bathymetry. Part of the sea level work was performed by Mr. Pat Caldwell, the NODC Liaison Officer at the University of Hawaii.

All profile and plankton data acquired as part of the GODAR project were included in World Ocean Database. A comparison of the number of stations by instrument type with previous NODC/WDC global ocean databases is also available.

The GODAR Project continues to locate and rescue historical oceanographic profile and plankton data that are at risk of being lost due to media decay and/or neglect. An international review meeting for the GODAR project was held during July, 1999 in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Note: Metadata for this dataset was extracted from a legacy database maintained by the U.S. National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC). The design of the database did not exactly reflect the FGDC Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM).

Principal Investigator (PI) and organization contact information accurately represents all available information from the legacy database at the time that this description was created. However, proper attribution of a PI to a specific institution or the role (submitting or collecting) taken by an institution may not be correct due to inexact mapping between fields in the legacy database and the CSDGM. Due to this uncertainty, the contact information was initially recorded in the Supplemental Information element of the CSDGM description.

To develop more accurate metadata, NCEI reviews metadata for all datasets on an ongoing basis.