A Proposed Web Site of NCEP’s Global Ocean Data Assimilation The operational data sets produced routinely by the Global Ocean Data Assimilation System (GODAS) developed at National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) are a valuable community asset to monitor different aspects of ocean climate variability and to assess benefits of NOAA’s extensive investment in global ocean observing program. To gain a broader dissemination of GODAS data products, and to increase research community involvement in the assessment of GODAS and the effectiveness of the ocean observing system, development of a website hosted by the Climate Prediction Center (CPC)/NCEP has been proposed recently. The proposed website, by including four sections describing pentad products, monthly products, climatology, and skill assessment, will be more comprehensive than existing websites that have either real time or near real time ocean analysis data and plots. The content of the proposed website will include oceanic variables that are assessed to have higher reliability, as well as oceanic variables where confidence in the GODAS generated products is assessed to be low. The content of the web site is expected to evolve according to the requirements of NOAA's Office of Climate Observation (OCO) and the feedback from the user community. The content that relates to the intercomparison of GODAS and observational datasets is expected to be a long term project and will require collaboration between CPC and individual PIs involved in collecting in situ observations. (Contact Yan Xue)
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