The TAO shipboard CTD program under the National Data Buoy Center

Since its modest beginnings in the early 1980s, the Tropical Oceans-Atmosphere (TAO) Program in the equatorial Pacific has evolved into what has been called the "crown jewel" of the Global Climate Observation System. Along with data from the 55 surface moorings and acoustic doppler current profiler data from four subsurface equatorial moorings, the ship cruises servicing the moored arrays provide unique temperature-salinity depth (CTD) datasets. Since 2007 the TAO Program has shifted from a research program under NOAA\´s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) to operational status under the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC). NDBC is now responsible for at-sea operations, data quality control and processing, and data delivery of all TAO data, including the shipboard CTD data. As a result of this change in organizational responsibilities, some aspects of data processing and delivery have also changed, but NDBC is committed to ensuring continuation of the high standards of data quality and delivery as under PMEL oversight. In this paper we provide an overview of the procedures used by NDBC to provide end-users with quality controlled CTD data from the TAO servicing cruises.