DLESE description of National Oceanographic Data Center

Together with the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and the National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC), The National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) is one of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration's (NOAA) environmental data centers, serving as a national repository and dissemination facility for global ocean data. Data queries within NODC can be conducted using either a basic search engine or the prototype version of the NODC Catalog. Alternately, direct access to the NODC oceanographic data archive is available with NODC Direct. Data searches across all of NOAA's electronic archives are possible by way of the NOAA Server, the Interactive Data Access and Retrieval System (IDARS), or the National Virtual Data System. The actual Research Divisions within NODC include the Coastal Ocean Laboratory (COL), the Ocean Climate Laboratory (OCL), and the NOAA Central Library. COL data are gathered on phenomena such as plankton, chlorophyll, waves and currents, temperature, ocean profiles, salinity levels, nutrients, oxygen contents, and so forth, while the OCL provides such resources as the World Ocean Atlas, the World Ocean Database, the Biological Atlas of the Arctic Seas 2000 (online), and the Atlas of Surface Marine Data 1994. An International Activities section includes the World Data Center for Oceanography and the International Ocean Atlas Series.