Summary

Description

The data contained here are surface marine observations from many different sources via the NCDC Global Telecommunication System (GTS) Marine in International Maritime Meteorological Archive (IMMA) format. The observations are obtained exclusively via the NCDC GTS stream and derives primarily from ships (merchant, ocean research, fishing, navy, etc.) and moored and drifting buoys. Each report contains individual observations of meteorological and oceanographic variables, such as sea surface and air temperatures, winds, pressure, humidity, wet bulb, dew point, ocean waves and cloudiness. NCDC takes the various observations and converts the GTS data to a standard IMMA format. This allows the observations to be used in a cohesive standard for input to larger datasets, such as the International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) Near-Real-Time (NRT) product. The dataset will be produced and archived monthly. Spatial coverage is global and the current period of record for these files will begin in January 2008 to the most current month. The data will be formated to the most current IMMA standard in ASCII file format.