Online Oceanographic Datasets and Data products

If the code or instructions below are helpful to you, I'd love to hear it. Always nice to know whether it's worthwhile to put these kinds of instructions online. (Send me an e-mail at the address above.) Even better, if you encounter and fix a relevant data-access issue that isn't in the "troubleshooting" below, let me know so I can add it to the page.

ARGO float data

--Last updated: 3 Nov 2011

Basic instructions to download and parse Argo hydrographic profiles into matlab.

Start at http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/argo/accessDaa.htm.

For geographically selected data (single basin) and limited time:

1. Download index files
   1. From URL click III. Argo Basins Data
   2. For each year and month of interest, right click the INDEX file and save to a data directory:
      eg. ../data/labsea/argo/AtlanticIndex
      
   3. Unzip files by cd'ing into that dir and calling
      $ unzip *
2. Convert text index files to mat data with read_argotxt_write_mat.m (function), rawm_all_scr.m (script), and parse_csvline.m (function).
   These will load and parse individiual index files into data structures and variables.
3. Determine floats needed using select_float_data_all.m (script) which uses the index files you've extracted. This saves a matlab file of callSigns and other pertinent data for the region and time period you select. Give the output file an appropriate name. This will be loaded in the argoprof_example_scr in the next step.
4. Download float data
   
   1. From URL click IV. Argo Floats Data
   2. For each float number needed, right click the data file (float number) and choose "Save as.." to a data directory
      eg. ../data/labsea/argo/FloatData
   3. For the profiles you've identified in the previous step, download the profile data then convert these netCDF format datafiles to .mat using read_nc_write_mat.m (function) and argoprof_example_scr.m (script).
5. Make some plots!