Status of NCDC Keying of Historical Marine Data

U.S. historical marine weather observations (1912-1946) are currently being digitized at a rate of approximately 80 thousand per month at the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). The existing quality control system, designed to help find (flag) keying errors, is being redesigned in an effort to improve efficiency so that the inspection (automated and manual) of the keyed records can keep pace with the digitizing rate. Approximately 2.5 million observations will be keyed under this project and should be available for the COADS Release 2 update. The history of the project along with some of the unique problems encountered while digitizing this historical marine data set are discussed. Inventories based on the data assembled for the Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (COADS, 1854-1979) Release 1 (Slutz et al., 1985) clearly indicate a lack of data during the World War I and II periods (reference Fig 1.). NOAA scientists, after conferring with COADS users, believed that digitizing additional marine data for these periods was warranted considering the significant contribution to the global climate from the world’s oceans and the current concerns over climate change. In preparation for Release 2 (Elms,1991), an update of the COADS data bas