System Description

Philosophy

High quality in situ measurements are prerequisite for satellite data product validation, algorithm development, and many climate-related inquiries. As such, the NASA Ocean Biology Processing Group (OBPG) maintains a local repository of in situ oceanographic and atmospheric data to support their regular scientific analyses. The SeaWiFS Project originally developed this system, SeaBASS, to catalog radiometric and phytoplankton pigment data used their calibration and validation activities. To facilitate the assembly of a global data set, SeaBASS was expanded with oceanographic and atmospheric data collected by participants in the SIMBIOS Program, under NASA Research Announcements NRA-96 and NRA-99, which has aided considerably in minimizing spatial bias and maximizing data acquisition rates.

The OBPG uses in situ bio-optical data for the validation of SeaWiFS, MODIS, and other ocean color missions, for example, OCTS and POLDER, and in the development of new ocean color algorithms. The OBPG also uses these data in support of international workshops, data merger studies, and time series analyses.

Archived data include measurements of apparent and inherent optical properties, phytoplankton pigment concentrations, and other related oceanographic and atmospheric data, such as water temperature, salinity, stimulated fluorescence, and aerosol optical thickness. Data are collected using a number of different instrument packages, such as profilers, buoys, and hand-held instruments, and manufacturers on a variety of platforms, including ships and moorings. SeaBASS includes data from over 1,500 field campaigns, collected by over 80 contributors from 55 institutions in 14 countries.

System design

The architecture of SeaBASS consists of three tiers: geophysical data and metadata recorded in digital text files that adhere to the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) format; a directory tree structure residing on a dedicated server at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center for storage of the data files; and, a relational database management system (RDBMS) used to catalog and distribute the data and files. Through the use of online search engines that interface with the RDBMS, the full bio-optical data set is queriable and available to authorized users via the World Wide Web at this site.

Data are released to the public once they have passed a series of quality control procedures.. Data collected prior to 1 January 2000 have been released to the NOAA National Oceanographic Data Center.

Additional web resources:

° The Ocean Color publications database
° The Ocean Color online forum
° SeaWiFS Project pre-launch technical report series
° SeaWiFS Project post-launch technical report series

Additional reading:

Author/Site Curator: Jeremy Werdell
Responsible NASA Official: Charles McClain
Last revised 19 April 2005