Data Centre for French Coastal Operational Oceanography

The data centre for French coastal operational oceanography (CDOCO) has been developed in the frame of PREVIMER, the coastal operational system for the French marine environment. The main objective of a coastal oceanography data centre is to provide in a timely fashion the data needed by modellers for assimilation, forcing and validation purposes. The goals of this data centre are: to provide operational services to the actors and users of coastal operational oceanography, to develop partnerships with the data producers and the data users, to develop the operational services for data collection, quality checks, archiving and distribution. The data are received as much as possible in real time or near real time and the data centre delivers it to the modelling processes for several daily runs. In order to feed the models, the data centre collects: in situ oceanographic measurements, meteorological data (wind, temperature, atmospheric pressure, rainfalls, radiation), hydrology information (rivers outflows and nutrient fluxes), limit conditions at open boundaries (Mercator, MFS, climatologies), bathymetry. Satellites observations are also taken in consideration but they are processed by the CERSAT data centre and do not circulate through the CDOCO. Two different data flows can be distinguished: a real time data flow which manages the data delivered by the partners (SHOM, Meteo-France, DIREN and IUEM) and a delayed mode data flow which manages other data such as reference data (bathymetry); climatologies, analyses. The data centre automatically collects all these data that are received at different frequencies (from several times a day to once a week). Both observed data collected for the models and model results (hindcast and nowcast analyses and forecasts) are archived. It is also of the responsibility of CDOCO to distribute (under agreement) the data and results in a timely fashion. The data are distributed on a timely basis to the actors of the PREVIMER operational prediction system. A password protected access is also provided to other users for downloading data through web interfaces. The data are distributed using standardized specific formats: NetCDF and ASCII.