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/"