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SUMD Portal

Surface Underway Marine Database Portal: Help

The Surface Underway Marine Database Portal is a research tool that enables users to discover, select, and retrieve data from the NCEI Surface Underway Marine Database: NCEI-SUMD. The NCEI-SUMD is a database developed at NCEI with the goal to provide a well-organized, uniformly quality-controlled, high (full) resolution surface underway dataset for the user community with granule search capability.

Data sets can be selected based on a number of user-selectable search criteria: Data Parameters, Data Sources, Observation Dates, Geographic Coverage, and Additional Terms.

If you have any comments or questions, please direct them to NCEI.Info@noaa.gov or project manager zhankun.wang@noaa.gov.

Data Parameters

There are four data parameters that can be selected to narrow down the search. Data Parameters can be selected by checking the appropriate box.

  • Sea Surface Salinity: Salinity derived from the conductivity and temperature measured by thermosalinographs.
  • Sea Surface Temperature - measured by remote temperature sensor: Temperature measured by an additional thermistor installed at the entrance of the seawater intake pipe. These are more accurate measurements of sea surface temperature, but may not be always available, as some TSG do not have remote thermistor(s).
  • Conductivity: Seawater conductivity measured by TSG, which can be used to calculate salinity.
  • Sea Surface Temperature - measured inside the TSG: Internal temperature measured inside the TSG cell. They may not be as accurate as the temperature from the remote thermistor(s) due to the heat exchange when seawater was pumped from the pipe entrance to the actual location of the TSG. The details of the pump system will vary from ship to ship.

Data Sources

Data Sources refers to data assembly centers where the original data files used to create the NCEI-SUMD database come from. There are mainly four sources.

  • Global Ocean Surface Underway Data (GOSUD): An initiative of the International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) programme. More information at http://www.gosud.org/.
  • Shipboard Automated Meteorological and Oceanographic System (SAMOS): A computerized data logging system that continuously records sea surface parameters while the vessel is at sea. More information at http://samos.coaps.fsu.edu/html/.
  • Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) TSG: A full resolution collection of TSG data from NOAA fleet ships, ships of the Ship of Opportunity Program and others. More information at: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/tsg/index.php
  • NCEI Archive Management System (AMS): Surface Underway data submitted to NCEI that are not included in the data from the three assembly centers.

Observation Dates

Start Date and End Date are defined as the starting and ending day, month, and year of the observations, respectively. Leave the fields blank to search across all records. The radio buttons of "intersects" and "within" allow you to search for records whose date ranges are partially intersecting or completely within the start date and end date.

Additional Terms

This is a free text search tool. The text you enter here will be searched against the content of every metadata record for every data set in the Surface Underway Marine Database exactly as you enter it in the box. For example, if you want data from vessel "L ATALANTE", enter "L ATALANTE" in the "Additional Terms" section.

Geographic Coverage

Geographic Coverage refers to the spatial coverage (latitude and longitude bounding box) of the overall observations. The radio buttons of "intersects" and "within" allow you to search for records whose latitude and longitude bounds are partially intersecting or completely within the geographic coverage.

Search example

Imagine you are looking for sea surface salinity data from the Pacific Ocean since 2000 to present. Here is how you can do the search:

  1. In the "Data Parameters" section: check the "Sea Surface Salinity" box.
  2. In the "Data Sources" section: select the term "Any" box. If you want data from a specific data source, select the one you need.
  3. In the "Observation Dates" section: select or input the date "2000-01-01" at "Start date" section. Leave the "End date" section blank.
  4. In the "Geographic Coverage" section: hold the "shift" key, and draw a rectangle around the Pacific Ocean. You can also enter the coordinates for latitude and longitude in the numeric fields below the map if needed.
  5. Press "Search".

A list of Surface Underway data in NetCDF format matching your search criteria will be displayed. To download data files in a compressed zip package, check the "Select All" box, the "Select Current Page" box or the individual boxes next to the file names and then click "Get Files". You can also select and download separate files using the three available file links (HTTPS, OPeNDAP, THREDDS) if needed.

Press the "Refine Search" button to update your search criteria to more precisely locate the data of interest. Press the "New Search" button to start over.