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OCADSFAQ
Ocean Carbon Data System (OCADS)
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

  1. What happened to CDIAC-Oceans?
    The ocean component of the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC-Oceans) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) was closed on September 30, 2016 due to discontinuation of funding from the Department of Energy. Data and files at CDIAC-Oceans will be available to the public until September 30, 2017 when CDIAC will be shut down.

  2. What is the future of the global ocean carbon data management?
    Data and services at CDIAC-Oceans will be transferred to NOAA/NCEI by September 30, 2017. Alex Kozyr joined NCEI as an affiliate staff member in 2017 and continues to do ocean carbon data managment, similar to what he has been doing in the past.

  3. What is the name of the ocean carbon data management system at NCEI?
    Ocean CArbon Data System (OCADS)

  4. What is the URL for the ocean carbon data management project at NCEI?
    /ocads/

  5. How do I submit ocean carbon data in the future?
    Please follow instructions on the OCADS Submit Data page.

  6. OCADS is now operated by NCEI which is part of the U.S. Government. Can scientists from other countries submit data to OCADS?
    Absolutely! We accept ocean carbon data from the international community. Like CDIAC-Oceans, we are committed to provide ocean carbon data management services for everyone around the world.

  7. Should I be concerned about sending my data to NCEI?
    Not at all. In accordance with principles set forth by ICSU, NCEI is the World Data Service for Oceanography (WDS-Oceanography). We do not deal with any confidential information. All data will be available to everyone around the world. In fact, all ocean carbon data sent to CDIAC-Oceans in the past are already being pulled into NCEI. Archiving international ocean carbon data at NCEI is not anything new.

  8. How do I access ocean carbon data from OCADS?
    All ocean carbon data, including the historical data from CDIAC-Oceans and new data archived through OCADS, is searchable through the Ocean Carbon and Acidification Data Portal. We are also working to covert CDIAC-Oceans' web pages so that you can still access data through clickable maps, etc. Please visit the OCADS web site once available.

  9. Why do data from CDIAC-Oceans need to be put into NCEI's archives?
    At NCEI, data management is a formal process. We are mandated by the government to store our data for 75 years or until no longer needed by the scientific community. If data are not put into the long-term archive, there is no way we can guarantee their availability. Once a data set is ingested into our long-term archives, it will be given an NCEI Accession number and will have standardized metadata (in ISO 19115-2 format), be available through data.gov, etc., making the data compliant with all of the our data management requirements. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Memorandum Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research issued February 22, 2013, also requires all NOAA-funded data to be stored in a long-term archive.

  10. What will happen to the utility pages such as those for CO2SYS?
    Such information can not be archived in NCEI's long-term data storage system. They will be served through static HTML and FTP servers at NCEI.

  11. Will OCADS adopt the CDIAC-Oceans' metadata pages for CDIAC-Oceans' historical data sets?
    Yes. The only changes we'll make to these pages are to replace the old ORNL CDIAC-Oceans header with the new OCADS header, to point the download link to NCEI's archives, and to replace the data citation information with NCEI's.

  12. Why won't OCADS simply adopt the CDIAC-Oceans' OME metadata templates for future ocean carbon data sets?
    We understand that the community has become used to CDIAC's metadata templates. However, we believe the new template will benefit the ocean carbon data management significantly in the long run. Here are some of the reasons:
    • We now have one template that can manage all types of ocean carbon data, significantly streamlining the ocean carbon data management effort.
    • The new template can be integrated to the broader ocean acidification data management framework at NCEI, reducing cost to maintain.
    • The structure of the new template is much simpler, conforms to ISO 19115-2 standard wherever it can, and allows mass processing of all variables easily.
    • The template allows us to document important information such as Title, Abstract, Data submitter, etc.
    • It is more capable when it comes to documenting ocean carbon data. For example, it allows users to document calibration information for total alkalinity, it covers pH information such as "at what temperature was pH reported", etc.
    • The new template enables users to document rich metadata information for non-carbon parameters as well.
    The bottom line is that the new template was developed bottom up by working with scientists in the field, it was peer-reviewd by scientists including Andrew Dickson (UCSD) and Robert Key (Princeton), and we are open to make it even better. If you have any comments on how to improve the template, please don't hesitate to let us know.

  13. What will happen to the rest of the CDIAC-Oceans' web pages, including clickable maps, etc.?
    All these pages will be pulled into NCEI. The only changes will be replacing their headers with NCEI's and updating links.

  14. Will the WAVES search tools for all data products such as GLODAP, GLODAPv2, CARINA, PACIFICA and LDEO Database be transfered to NCEI and available to data users?
    We are investigating the possibilities of maintaining the popular search engine, Web Accessible Visualization and Extraction System (WAVES), for data products such as GLODAP, CARINA, PACIFICA, GLODAPv2 and LDEO Database or replacing it with something similar (for example PMEL's SOCAT Data Viewer or WODselect interface). However, IT security must be considered and some CDIAC tools may not be able to be deployed at NCEI.

  15. Data generated from the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program (OAP) are required to be sent to NCEI through the Ocean Acidification Data Stewardship (OADS) Project. Will ocean carbon data archived through the OADS project and those through the new OCADS project have the same display format?
    Yes. The OCADS metadata template is fully compatible with NCEI's broader ocean acidification data management effort. No matter through which project you submit your ocean carbon data, they will have exactly the same metadata display format. They will all be available through NCEI's Ocean Carbon and Acidification Portal.

  16. What are the pros and cons of managing ocean carbon data at NCEI?
    Pros:
    1. Data will be stored in NCEI's archives, ensuring what happened to CDIAC-Oceans today will never happen again in the future,
    2. We will leverage NCEI's version control capability to make all historical versions of the data set accessible and citable,
    3. We will apply controlled vocabularies to make sure ocean carbon data are discoverable through a standardized list of terms,
    4. By sending data to NCEI, NOAA PIs automatically meet their data management requirements as set forth by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Memorandum Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research.
    Cons:
    1. Data have to be reviewed and approved as per NCEI standard procedures before they can be published. It could potentially take longer to get a data set published.

  17. Will OCADS use the CDIAC assigned DOIs for historical data sets, as these DOIs have been used in scientific publications?
    We are working with NCEI's management team to see if we can adopt CDIAC's DOIs for NCEI data citation purposes for the historical CDIAC data sets. Hopefully we can have an aswer soon. Minimally, we'll ensure that users can use the old CDIAC DOIs to locate these data sets from our data discovery portal.

  18. Will OCADS assign DOIs for new data archived?
    Yes, NCEI can mint DOIs for data sets, upon request.

Last modified: 2022-03-16T14:00:16Z