Cataloging of NODC Archives on the NASA Ocean Data System

The efficient management of rapidly increasing quantities of satellite-derived oceanographic data and related in-situ data poses a major challenge for the immediate future. In an effort to respond to this challenge the NASA Ocean Data System (NODS) was developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. NODS is a computer-based on-line data information system which provides a data catalog, sample browse files, and data acquisition capabilities. The Global On-Line Data (GOLD) catalog of NODS provides a user with the ability to identify data sets which meet his specified search criteria. NODS is being linked via a telecommunications network with various remote archives including the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC).In order to evaluate the GOLD catalog´s utility for in-situ data, NODC elected to initially load information about its archive of drifting buoy data. This effort identified some problems which led to recommendations to improve the GOLD catalog design.