New field names are added SeaBASS over time to meet the needs of evolving science and new types of submissions. New fields are not usually announced, but special attention is called to the recently added variations of commonly submitted measurements. These variants were added to keep distinct measurements or derivations whose methodology imparts significant differences or caveats compared to other techniques. Effort is made to avoid creating an unnecessary amount of field names in SeaBASS, but that is balanced by also trying to prevent lumping together distinct measurements in a way that cannot be separated easily.
Several new metadata headers have been created to make it easier to interpret useful information without users needing to manually parse external documents. These new headers are optional but recommended from now on:
A new web-based SeaBASS Regional Time Series Tool is available under "Get Data" in the main menu. It is designed to visualize and serve time-based comparisons of satellite-to-satellite and in situ measurements.
For a given region, one or more satellite sensors must be selected and then all available satellite and in situ data validation data within the bounds of the study site will be combined for comparison as figures and percent frequency distributions. User options are available to select a measurement product of interest (e.g., Rrs, IOPs, Chl, etc), adjust the data averaging period (weekly, monthly, seasonal), the date range, and other graphing options. Each region has a brief description that includes links to extra information about the primary in situ data sources and a map that shows the boundaries used to define each region. With the click of a button, users may also download the source data.
Due to security vulnerabilities within FTP (File Transfer Protocol), all FTP-based SeaBASS services, including data submission and FCHECK (via FTP) requests, will be permanently phased out on 19 March 2018.
SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol), which offers similar functionality and uses individual accounts for each data submitter, will serve as the replacement.
We have updated our data submission instructions with the new procedures for how SeaBASS data submitters may apply for SFTP access to submit their data to the SeaBASS archive and how to run FCHECK requests via SFTP on SeaBASS data files.
We apologize for any inconvenience these changes may cause.
An updated version of the MATLAB SeaBASS file reader (readsb) is available.
The updated workflow of the SeaBASS validation process has been described in a new wiki article SeaBASS Validation Description
New tools have been added to make it easier to preview or download data when browsing the archive, or one of the Investigator, Experiment, or Cruise pages. Now, all of those pages have links you can click to harness the power of the File Search to bulk download all the data you are browsing, including any subdirectories plus related documents.
Code updates to the offline satellite validation match-up tools have been pushed to the SeaDAS copy of the OCSSW software packages. Please update your installation of OCSSW components of SeaDAS to receive the latest bug fixes and code updates to these tools.
Updates include fixes relative to comments being appended to the output SeaBASS file header and fixes related to the computation and filtering of the coefficient of variation as it relates to the satellite data extracts.
As part of the latest release of the SeaDAS software package, SeaBASS staff have included two command-line tools to 1) locate coincident OB.DAAC Level-2 satellite granules given an in situ point or range in space and time, or a SeaBASS file with latitude, longitude, and time fields, and 2) create satellite match-ups from an OB.DAAC Level-2 satellite granule outputting the satellite data extracts to a SeaBASS file containing coincident in situ measurements. Read more here.
The SeaBASS homepage has been updated to better provide access to core functions of our website, data search, and data submission tools. The new layout also provides quick summaries of recent data submissions and relevant SeaBASS announcements.