Data rescue efforts at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory

PMEL has received funding from NOAA's ESDIM project to support the rescue and dissemination of older data collected by scientists at the Laboratory. Data rescue work has been completed at PMEL under six major areas:

• Arctic (CTD's, ARGOS drifters, current meters, pressure gauges, bottle data)
• Pacific chemistry (bottle data)
• other XBTs (currently only available locally at PMEL)
• other CTDs (includes US West Coast, Asia, Alaska)
• other time series (currently only available locally at PMEL)
• database enhancements including on-the-fly EPIC data selection .

These efforts encompass processing of original data in danger of loss due to the decay of the original media, translation of previously processed data into standardized data formats, generation of an archival listing of data located from various sources and improvements to the EPIC database. Efforts have also resulted in on-line access to portions of the rescued data through WWW browsers for data. DIF entries for inclusion in the NOAA Data Directory have also been produced.

Arctic data

PMEL has long conducted research in Arctic areas to study circulation, ice formation, polar meteorology amd other topics. The data collected have been scattered over a number of projects and data locations. Starting in FY94, PMEL received funding from NOAA's ESDIM project to gather and make accessible these data. On line access to CTD and sectional plots has been developed and will be expanded to provide access to plots of both physical/chemical and biological parameters. Current meter , CTD , bottle , and meteorological and ice buoy data have been located, quality checked and loaded into PMEL's EPIC database.

Pacific chemistry data

Field programs at PMEL have archived approximately 1000 magnetic tapes of time series and chemistry data. These tapes are 10 to 15 years old and are suffering decay such that they will eventually become unreadable. Efforts have been completed to copy these data to a more stable optical medium and to make them accessible via an interface to the EPIC database.

XBT data recovery and inclusion in EPIC

The XBT component of the data rescue effort has converted XBTs from 19 cruises to EPIC format. None of the data that have been converted existed on the VAX in any format prior to the data rescue effort. The XBTs that have been rescued were originally in three different formats -- SEAS III format on PC diskettes, SEAS-BATHY format on HP-85 cartridges, and SEAS-SUTRON format on HP-85 diskettes. The general procedure for rescuing the data included 5 steps: transferring the XBT data to the VAX, entering the associated weather data into a VAX file, converting the XBT casts and their corresponding weather information to EPIC format, performing the data quality control, and loading the acceptable casts into the EPIC data base. A locally available EPIC Profile Data selection Web interface has been developed to enhance access to XBT data. This interface will eventually be available to the general scientific community.

CTD data recovery from R2D2 format

The CTD component of the data rescue project recovered and converted 5225 stations worth of CTD casts that were various R2D2 directories. The data were located, converted to an ASCII output format, quality checked and loaded into the EPIC database. Data came from cruises in the Bering Sea (FISH), the Gulf of Alaska and the western Pacific as far south as 60S (CLIMATE), the Oregon, California and Washington coasts (FISH, CALIF and ACID), the East China Sea (CHINA) and Puget Sound. Data from 90 cruises dating from 1972 to 1987 were recovered. Data selection is available through a Web interface.

Current meter data recovery

The time series component converted 900 time series from R2D2 format to EPIC format. These records represent data from Puget Sound, China, California, and Arctic investigations from 1970 to 1986. Data selection for Puget Sound, China and the U.S. West Coast is available through a Web interface. Arctic data are also available.

Conversion of EPIC from RIM to INGRES

The database component of the PMEL data rescue project is concerned with improvements to the EPIC database system which is used as the central repository of XBT, CTD, time series and other types of data at PMEL. The EPIC system includes data sets, a data index, graphics display and analysis routines, documentation, and maintenance utilities. The data index was originally implemented using the relational data base management system (RDBMS) BOEING RIM. As RIM is no longer maintained or supported by Boeing, the data index is being reimplemented using Ingres and mSQL. At the same time, the Fortran routines used to load and maintain the data index are being simplified and made more portable through use of calls to EPSLIB. New routines are being written in C.

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