SEACOOS NetCDF Standard
NOTE: The SEACOOS project has terminated, although many resources are still on line. The SECOORA project is currently updating these resources and will be publishing new versions sometime in 2009. Please use the links on this page with caution, as they are now deprecated.
The Southeast Atlantic Coastal Ocean Observing system have defined standardised content and conventions for encoding oceanographic data in NetCDF based upon the CF conventions developed by the atmospheric modelling community.
The content standard covers data conforming to a range of 'data models'. These specify the shape of the data and their related spatio-temporal framework - 'feature types' in the terminology of ISO TC211/OGC standards. The following feature types are supported:
- Fixed-point: a fixed-point station with dependent variables measured by sensors at different heights. Z constant for a given sensor.
- Fixed-profiler: a fixed-profiler station with dependent variables measured at multiple heights for a given time.
- Fixed-map: a fixed-map dataset with dependent variables measured at multiple lat and lon and specific z at a given time.
- Moving-point-2D: a moving-point station with dependent variables measured by sensors at different heights. Z constant for a given sensor.
- Moving-point-3D: a moving-point platform that moves in 3D space and all sensors are sampling at the same time.
- Moving-profiler: a moving-profiler station with dependent variables measured at multiple heights for a given time and varying in position.
Version 2.0 of the documentation was published in December 2004 and the guide will be used to direct the formatting of data posted on SEACOOS OpenDAP servers by participating laboratories.
Largely based on CF with extensions where necessary to port concepts from the atmospheric to the oceanographic domain. Structures are able to handle datum issues for sea level data, which gave been discussed but not addressed by the CF community.
