1. PROVIDING DATA SERVICES FOR THE MEDITERRANEAN AND BLACK SEAS
CESUM International Conference,Varna, Octobre 2003
PROVIDING DATA SERVICES
FOR THE MEDITERRANEAN AND BLACK SEAS
C. MAILLARD, E. BALOPOULOS, N. MIKHAILOV, M. FICHAUT, G. MAUDIRE, M-J. GARCIA, B. MANCA, A. SUVOROV, A. GIORGETTI, A. IONA, M. RIXEN and MEDAR Group
EC-MAST Concerted Action (MAS3-CT /ERBIC20-CT )

2. MEDAR GROUP

3. Rationale and Background
Long time series of marine observations are required for many scientific and technical studies, especially to follow up changes in the sea waters, to manage living and non-living marine resources and to make predictions. Therefore, the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) has reviewed key parameters that should be provided with known precision.
Such data are collected by scientific teams of many countries, but in most cases they remain dispersed in heterogeneous formats and systems. Their access is difficult, and due the lack of appropriate archiving, they are frequently in danger to be lost.
The IOC “Global Ocean Data Archaeology and Rescue (GODAR)” programme has been launched to rescue and disseminate the dispersed data. Two pilot projects MODB and MEDATLAS ( ) initiated the Mediterranean and Black Sea regional module of GODAR. As a result, an important database of vertical temperature and salinity profiles was released for public use.
A following EU concerted action MEDAR/MEDATLAS-II (MAS3-CT & ERBIC20-CT ), was launched in 1998 with the overall objective to make available a comprehensive data product of multi-disciplinary in-situ data and information in the Mediterranean and Black Sea, through a wide co-operation of the bordering countries.

4. MEDAR OBJECTIVES
To compile and safeguard historical data of core basic parameters:
influencing the biodiversity and the primary production and necessary for the modellisation of the region;
for which sufficient preliminary knowledge of the distributions were available to allow quality checks to be performed.
To develop an integrated database by:
using a common exchange format;
implementing a common protocol for quality checking.
To compute gridded climatological statistics for all the parameters.
To publish and disseminate the resulting observed and analysed data and the meta-data.
To build capacity and enhance communication between scientists and data managers.

5. Tasks Organization

6. DATA BASE CONTENT (PARAMETERS)
Nb of Profiles
Temperature
Nitrite
10 508
Salinity
Ammonium
5 239
Oxygen
44 928
Chlorophyll
4 672
Phosphate
20 761
Alkalinity
2 548
Silicate
15 920
Total Phosphorus
2 381 PH
14 512
H2S
1 843
Nitrate
10 572
Total Nitrogen
153

7. DATA BASE CONTENT (DATA TYPE)
Nb of Profiles in MEDATLAS 2002 (MEDATLAS 1997)
MBT, XBT Thermistor chains
( )
CTD
(15 778)
Bottle Casts
88 323
(33 977)

8. TEMPERATURE

9. SALINITY

10. DISSOLVED OXYGEN

11. PHOSPHATE

12. CHLOROPHYLL

13. QUALITY CHECKS QCO : Automatic check of the format
QC1 : Automatic and visual check of the headers
QC2 : Automatic and visual check of the data points
a quality flag to each numerical value (GTSPP flag scale)

14. DATA QUALITY
GOOD
FALSE
DOUBTFUL
OUT OF STATISTICS
NO QC

15. CLIMATOLOGY Methodology
Computation of Climatological Analysis by Variational Inverse Model (VIM) algorithms
Computation made on finite elements and then re-interpolated on a regular grid (0.2 degrees in Latitude and Longitude), with smaller scales for local computations
T, S and bio-chemical climatology reviewed by regional experts and modellers

16. CLIMATOLOGY - Results
Selected numerical fields depending on data availability:
Annual , seasonal and monthly climatology
Temperature, Salinity
Annual and seasonal
Oxygen, Silicate, Phosphate
Hydrogen sulphide (H2S) in the Black Sea
Annual only
Nitrate, Nitrite, pH, Ammonium, Alkalinity, Chlorophyll
No climatology
Total Phosphorus, Total Nitrogen

17. CLIMATOLOGY – Results 2500 horizontal maps, vertical sections and stations location SOME EXAMPLES

19. SALINITY at 10m Depth

20. VERTICAL SECTIONS and surface zoom

22. DATA PRODUCT (A set of 4 CD-ROMs)
CD-ROM 1: Documentation on the project and its results
Cruise inventory
Software
QCmedar ODV
CD-ROM 2: Database Observed data + SELMED interface for extraction (according to various criteria), interpolation and visualization - export formats: MEDATLAS, CSV or ODV.
CD-ROM 4: climatology Black Sea + E-Mediterranean
CD-ROM 3: Climatology Global + W-Mediterranean

24. Conclusion 1: Present Services
MEDAR network disseminate MEDATLAS 2002, presently the best available integrated data base for the Mediterranean & BLack Seas. It provides also further data services:
Extraction and distribution of regional or thematics subsets, to answer specific requests,
Implementation of the common protocols and practices for data formatting and checking for quality,
Additional services at the national levels: continuous compilation, quality checking with feedback to source scientists, perennial archiving and dissemination of new data.
Visit our distributed web site:

25. Conclusion 2: Further needs to meet
Direct internet access to the more complete available data sets : historical data + data released in recent projects including real time data - Use of up-to-date communication technology for data dissemination
Increase in quantity and quality the data and products availability such as estimates of the mean, decadal, seasonal, monthly statistics at basin, regional and shelf scales – requires a large quantity of data of good quality
Improve and document the QC standards and protocols, especially for bio-chemicals and products
Increase efficiency through enhanced international cooperation & capacity building activities - requires more portable software, meetings and training courses
Increase of the public awareness on the data heritage
New concerted actions in preparation: MEDBLACK-ODN, SEA-DATANET

26. Thank You