NOAA's Climate Database Modernization Program marine data rescue

Today, local and global climate change is in the forefront of public planning and scientific analysis. Surface marine data plays a significant role in understanding ocean-atmosphere interactions and needs to be enhanced to its fullest potential to ensure a more accurate knowledge of the global climate, past and present. Data covering many areas of the world's oceans is extremely sparse both spatially and temporally, with the best coverage along the most heavily travelled shipping routes. The need to recover all possible data for these sparsely covered areas has never been greater.

NOAA'S Climate Database Modernization Program (CDMP) is devoted to the preservation, digitization and the merging of environmental and marine data into national and international databases. With rescue projects ranging from keying historical logbook data to digitally imaging rare book collections and photographs, CDMP specializes in preserving all sources of historical marine data and important metadata. Through national and international partnerships, marine data sources will continue to be discovered and the CDMP is committed to making sure these data will be made available for future generations.