The following text, adapted from Woodruff et al. (1998), describes some of the data corrections and enhancements made for Release 1b: A variety of data additions was made to Release 1b. For example, Russia has provided its Marine Meteorological Data Set of ship data from the former Soviet Union extending back to 1888 (1980-94 data were used for Release 1a), plus Arctic data back to 1950 from manned "North Pole" (NP) stations on ice floes. Surface-level sea temperatures extracted from oceanographic profiles were added from the 1994 World Ocean Atlas (WOA) (Levitus and Boyer, 1994; Boyer and Levitus, 1994). Another important new input for Release 1b was drifting buoy data gathered by MEDS for the FGGE period (1978-79). Two errors corrected or mitigated as part of Release 1b processing involved widespread temperature biases in Global Telecommunications System (GTS) data: The first occurred in data from U.S. Air Force Global Weather Central (GWC; deck 888), which represents the principal GTS source for COADS during 1973-79. GWC temperatures (air, sea surface, and dew point) were 0.2C lower than they should be for the period 1973 through approximately April 1977, stemming from confusion over a change in the Kelvin base value in the original Air Force format. The second problem involved a truncation correction applied many years ago to Monterey Telecommunications (1966-73) air temperatures, which produced an average Monterey bias of approximately +0.4C because many early temperatures were reported in whole degrees. Reversal of the correction yielded better agreement with other sources during 1966-69, whereas during 1970-73 retention of the original correction by NCDC (i.e., no adjustment by COADS) was deemed more appropriate. Reference: Woodruff, S.D., H.F. Diaz, J.D. Elms, and S.J. Worley, 1998: COADS Release 2 Data and Metadata Enhancements for Improvements of Marine Surface Flux Fields. Phys. Chem. Earth, 23, 517-527.Contact points for additional information
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Scott D. Woodruff, IT Specialist NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (R/PSD3) 325 Broadway Boulder, CO 80305 USA Phone: +1 303-497-6747 FAX: +1 303-497-6181 e-mail: Scott.D.Woodruff@noaa.gov |
Steven J. Worley, Data Support Section National Center for Atmospheric Research P.O. Box 3000 Boulder, CO 80307 USA Phone: +1 303-497-1248 FAX: +1 303-497-1298 e-mail: worley@ucar.edu |
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