MEDAR/MEDATLAS II Climate data

The aim of the MEDAR/MEDATLAS II project is to archive and rescue
multi-disciplinary in-situ hydrographic and bio-chemical data of the
Mediterranean and the Black Seas through a wide cooperation of
countries. The growing interplay between scientific disciplines
requires multi-disciplinary integration of this information which
includes, among many other parameters, temperature and salinity,
dissolved oxygen, hydrogen sulfure, alkalinity, phosphate, ammonium,
nitrite, nitrate, silicate, chlorophyll and pH.

The project was divided into several tasks. First, a global inventory
was compiled using existing data sets of the core parameters and their
cruise reports from the WDC-A, the WDC-B, the ICES and the MEDATLAS I
inventories. Duplicates were eliminated by careful
cross-checking. Secondly, the data sets were assembled regionally for
the Western, Central and Eastern Region and the Black Sea sub-areas.,
trans-coded in the common ASCII human readable MODB/MEDATLAS format
and quality checked by regional experts. Finally, a global integration
ensured the assembling and consistency of the regional data sets. The
vertical profiles were interpolated on 25 standard vertical levels,
chosen according to the vertical distribution of the data: 0, 5, 10,
20, 30, 50, 75, 100, 125, 150, 200, 250, 300, 400, 500, 600, 800,
1000, 1200, 1500, 2000, 2500, 3000, 3500 and 4000m. which build the
data set on standard levels.

The Objective Analysis to compute the climatological statistics is
performed by GHER at the Liege University. The climatological
computation is made from the observed data included in the MEDATLAS
2002 data base and from the MATER data base (European project MAss
Transfer and Ecosystem Response - MAS3 - CT96 - 0051) thanks to the
kind permission of the project coordination on the behave of the MATER
group (this MATER data base is not included on the MEDATLAS 2002 data
base).

Data link: "http://modb.oce.ulg.ac.be/Medar"

Responsible scientist : Michel Rixen ([e-mail])

Information from the IFREMER and the University of Liege (Belgium) web site:

"http://www.ifremer.fr/sismer/index_FR.htm"
"http://modb.oce.ulg.ac.be/"