SEACOOS publishes NetCDF Standard Proposal

SEACOOS CDL v2.0 describes a set of conventions adopted by the SouthEast Atlantic Coastal Ocean Observing System (SEACOOS) to promote sharing and exchange of data from disparate ocean observing and remote-sensing data sources. These data include observations from buoys, offshore towers, ships, tide- and stream-gauging stations, acoustic profilers, radar, aircraft, satellites and other remote mapping sensors. SEACOOS is a regional partnership that has initiated an integrated coastal ocean observing system for a four-state (North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida) region of the southeast coastal U.S. (Seim, et al., 2003, Seim, et al, 2002). SEACOOS partners publish near real-time data in netCDF (network Common Data Form) format and make it available on the Internet through OPeNDAP (Open source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol) Servers.

SEACOOS CDL v2.0 details the agreed upon netCDF format categories, required variables, and required and recommended attributes. The name of this standard is “SEACOOS CDL”. CDL stands for Common Data Language. The current accepted version is 2.0.

SEACOOS CDL v2.0 provides conformity to develop automated search and aggregation tools. It is also flexible to allow SEACOOS to coordinate many different sources of data into a merged dataset and provide unique graphical displays of these merged data in near real-time. SEACOOS CDL provides an unambiguous output format for SEACOOS partners. It allows anyone to incorporate their observational data into powerful displays with similar data.

The SEACOOS CDL v2.0 manual was written by Sara Haines of UNC-CH. The SEACOOS CDL v2.0 propsed standard was drafted by Tom Cook (U. of Miami), Jeremy Cothran (USC), Jeff Donovan (USF), Ed Kearns (U. of Miami), Sara Haines (UNC-CH), Trent Moore (Skidaway), Charlton Purvis (USC), Vembu Subramanian (USF), and Elizabeth Williams (U. of Miami).