Data Notes

The information contained here is of interest to anyone using the U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank on-line data system. It contains problem reports, time-critical data notes and other information about the on-line data. It should be checked periodically for new items.

January 25, 2000

Satellite data from GSO/URI unavailable

Satellite data (1993 --> January 1999) from GSO/URI is unavailable. We are working to correct the problem. [Problem corrected as of January 31, 2000.]

January 7, 2000

Main server unavailable, Tuesday, January 11, 2000

The main U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank data and information server will be unavailable Tuesday, January 11, 2000 to replace a failing disk drive. We hope to be back up sometime in the afternoon (EST). (This is a rescheduling of the repair that was to take place on Wednesday, January 5.)

January 6, 2000

Some Satellite Images Unaccessible

Glenn Strout at UMass/Dartmouth wrote: "Currently one of our network machines is down due to a disk crash. Our system manager isn't due into the office until next week. URI recently installed a firewall which has prevented us from downloading the daily images. Welcome to 2000! We should have these problems resolved by the end of next week."

September 29, 1999

Problem accessing NMFS/Woods Hole data

There is a problem accessing NMFS/Woods Hole data, including wind stress, drifter, along track, and hydrography data. Data files are not accessible. [Problem resolved Spetember 30, 1999.]

August 4, 1999

Main U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank Data and Information Server Down Wednesday

On Wednesday, August 4, the main U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank data and information server will be down for several hours during software upgrades.

June 28, 1999

OI Images Cannot Be Accessed

The daily cloud-free, AVHRR-derived, optimally interpolated (OI) images stored at GSO/URI are not accessable due to some rewiring being done at the site. Access trouble may be experienced during the rest of this week.

June 11, 1999

CTD and moored current meter data unavailable Monday

Peter Smith's CTD and moored current meter data will be unavailable Monday, June 14, 1999, since their web data server will be down.

June 7, 1999

Problem with selection and projection options

We have uncovered a problem with the selection and projection options. When either one or both are used, the data are not displayed as normal "web" pages. We are working to resolve the problem. Sorry for the inconvenience.

May 27, 1999

Main data and information server unanavailable June 10, 1999

The U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank main data and information server (globec.whoi.edu) will be unavailable June 10, 1999, from 1800 - 2100 (local time) due to a scheduled, local, network outage. Note: this is a rescheduling of an outage originally planned for today.

April 14, 1999

NMFS/Woods Hole Data Server Down

  • The NMFS/Woods Hole data server is unvailable. The wind_stress, hydrography, nmfs_ctd, and various drifter and alongtrack objects will not be available until the source of the problem is determined and corrected. We apologize for any inconvience this may cause you. [Problem corrected.]
  • April 1, 1999

    NMFS/Woods Hole Data Server Down

  • The NMFS/Woods Hole data server will be down starting today, April 1 through Monday, April 5. Therefore, the wind_stress, hydrography, nmfs_ctd, and various drifter and alongtrack objects will not be available until then. We apologize for any inconvience this may cause you.
  • March 22, 1999

    AVHRR data unavailable

  • AVHRR satellite images archived at the University of Massachusetts/Dartmouth after January 31, 1999 are unavailable. We are working to fix the problem. In the meantime, Tim Mavor offered to put a small time-period (< 5 days?) on his anonymous ftp site as necessary. Contact Tim at tim@chips1.gso.uri.edu. Also, Jim Bisagni (jbisagni@umassd.edu) can provide images via ftp.

    March 16, 1999

    Archived OI-SST data at URI/GSO now available

  • All OI-SST and AVHRR satellite images archived at URI/GSO are now available.

    March 4, 1999

    Archived OI-SST data at URI/GSO unavailable

  • Due to router problems, Jim Bisagni's archived OI-SST data at URI/GSO will not be available until the problem is cleared up. Tentative time when the data comes back on-line: March 8. The AVHRR data should be available, though infrequent and intermittent outages *may* occur. [Via e-mail from Tim Mavor, 4 Mar 1999 10:35:41.]

    January 26, 1999

    Cannot access NMFS/Woods Hole data objects

  • All of the data objects being served by NMFS/Woods Hole cannot be accessed. You will see something like: "You don't have permission to access ...." or "&x Error: Cannot be found in dictionary ...." We are working on the problem and it will be resolved as soon as possible. Sorry for the inconvience. [Problem partially resolved January 27, 1999 and fully resolved January 28, 1999
  • August 13, 1998

    New ISP for URI (from Robert Sand <sand@gsosun1.gso.uri.edu>)

  • Today, the Network and Telecomunications group in Kingston sucessfully changed URI's Internet Service Provider (ISP) from Verio to MCI. You may notice that accessing sites on the Internet is quicker, this is due to the new service and takes advantage of MCI's position as one of the largest Internet backbone providers.

    You may also encounter some problems with people connecting to URI. This temporary problem is related to the time necessary for the change in ISP to be broadcast around the Internet so that other peoples computers relearn how to get to URI. It should pass shortly.

  • August 6, 1998

    Broad Scale average temperature and salinity

  • Every GLOBEC Broad Scale cruise report has included a table with the average temperature and salinity in the surface layer (0-30m) for four regions of Georges Bank. An error has been found in the routine that selected which stations to include in a region (in effect, shifting the search area up to a few tenths of a degree south - enough to pick up or drop a station or two).

    The average values for each survey were recalculated - this time using the correct areas and using the final processed CTD data, including the data from the intermediate Bongo stations (which were not included in the previous calculations). The values didn't change much - the seasonal and the interannual variability looked pretty much the same - but the numbers were different.

    The Bank-wide average fluorescence for each survey (not presented in the cruise reports, but shown at a few meetings) also was recalculated.

    Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. And thanks to Charlie Miller and Jen Crain for recognizing that there was a problem.

    Via e-mail message from David Mountain
    06 Aug 1998 09:28:49 -0400

    July 20, 1998

    UTC/local time conversion utility has "round-off" error

  • The utility that we use to convert between local time and UTC (aka GMT) time has a 1 minute round-off error under certain conditions. We have seen this problem in the meteorological data from several Endeavor cruises. The error is evidenced by a one minute mismatch between the "year day" parameter value and the local date/time parameters. We are working to fix this problem, and will let you know when the fix is in place. Note: This problem has been fixed as of July 22, 1998.

    July 6, 1998

    J. Bisagni's satellite images available as of July 6.

  • The data server is operational again serving Jim Bisagni's satellite images, including the OI images.

    June 29, 1998

    J. Bisagni's satellite images unavailable starting Thursday, July 2.

  • Tim Mavor at URI said that his computer, chips1.gso.uri.edu, will be having a system upgrade starting on Thursday, July 2. Hence, any data served off of this machine, like Jim Bisagni's OI images, or his AVHRR data for Georges Bank, will be unavailable during that time. He will keep us updated as to when *exactly* this will be occurring, and when he expects chips1 to be up and serving data again.

    May 18, 1998

    Data and information server unavailable

  • The main U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank data and information server will be unavailable Wednesday, May 20 from 8:30am to about 6:00pm for hardware upgrades. If this causes you significant problems, please contact the Data Management Office and we will reschedule.
  • February 5, 1998

    MET 1 Hour Data Removed - needs reprocessing *UPDATE*

    The one hour averaged meteorological wind direction data for 1995 has been corrected and is back on-line. We are still working on the 1996-present data. As these data files become available, they will be placed on-line. If you have any questions contact the Data Management Office. Addendum: all data have been reprocessed and corrected as of April 1998.

    January 20, 1998

    MET 1 Hour Data Removed - needs reprocessing

    The one hour averaged meteorological data had an error in the wind direction and has been deleted from the data system. Newly processed data will be available shortly. If you have any questions contact the Data Management Office

    January 12, 1998

    New JGOFS Software Available

    The new JGOFS software release, version 1.5 is being used by the U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank home page. The data directory has a new look, with listing, display and other options available via buttons at the top of each data page when these are available. The data objects are located near the top of the page and the directory of available objects is moved to the bottom of the page. Since this is a new release and some bugs may yet be uncovered, please report any problems you have to the Data Management Office.

    May 23, 1997

    Trouble accessing satellite images

    The computer system that houses the satellite images is moving from NOAA to GSO. Images should be available as soon as the move is complete.

    April 29, 1997

    Trouble accessing satellite images

    There is trouble accessing the satellite image data server. I will correct the problem as soon as possible. Sorry for the inconvenience. Fixed: April 30, 1997

    March 5, 1997

    New "options server" in use

    As of today, the globec system will handle most of the "Other options" tasks when dealing with data accessed from the U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank data server. Previously, these tasks (such as making x-y plots, or formatting data for use my Matlab) were done by puddle. The new server is a faster processor, so performance should improve.

    February 4, 1997

    NMFS/Woods Hole CTD data served with corrupted data lines

    Several CTD data sets served from the NMFS/Woods Hole data server appear with corrupted data lines. These show up as either missing values, or what look like multiple data lines concatenated together. We are looking into this problem and will correct it as soon as possible. Update: This problem was fixed as of February 19, 1997 when the jgof.wh.whoi.edu server took over for the whsun2 server.

    November 20, 1996

    NMFS/Woods Hole data temporarily unavailable

    The NMFS/Woods Hole data server is moving to another platform so their data are temporarily unavailable. [As of ~1500 the data are available.]

    01/16/1996

    Georges Bank Central Server unavailable due to upgrades

    The U.S. GLOBEC Georges Bank central data server and Web site will be unavailabe Thursday, January 25, 1996 and again in early February in order to upgrade its operating system to Solaris 2.5 and hardware (more memory and disk space.) Please contact the Program Office if these scheduled times are inconvienient.

    01/09/1996

    Correction to wind speed units in the thesaurus(Bob Groman)

    The thesaurus incorrectly listed the units for various wind speeds as knots. The units should have been in meters per second. The thesaurus has been corrected as of today.

    09/07/1995

    The defexec method (Bob Groman)

    The defexec method is very flexible in that it can be used both to execute scripts and programs as well as open up lower level data files just like the def method can do. It uses the presence of double quotes ("...") around data values to suppress creating a hypertext link to the next level. Blanks can appear within the text enclosed within the double quotes. However, if you do want to create a link (and therefore do not use the double quotes) do not include any blank spaces in the text string. If you do, the link may not work. This is because a selection at the next level is being made and selection does not handle blanks. As a work-around, replace the spaces with underlines.

    09/01/1995

    Hydrographic data contour plots (David Mountain)

    A problem has been identified with some of the contour plots of hydrographic data in the Broad Scale cruise reports. For plots of bottom values, to be considered a bottom value the deepest observation in a cast had to be within 10m of the bottom where the depth was < 100m and within 25m where > 100m. If not, the station was not included in the contouring. The problem is that all station locations were posted on the plots, whether a bottom value existed or not. The deep stations off the bank (7, 16, and 29) do not have bottom values, are not included in the contouring, but their locations are posted. If they were included, the southern boundary of the Bank would be ringed by higher temperature, salinity and density contours.

    This will be corrected in future plotting - by posting only those stations with bottom values.

    Thanks to Bob Houghton for recognizing the problem.