MEDSPIRATION

The international GODAE steering committee initiated the international GODAE High Resolution SST Pilot Project (GHRSST-PP) to develop a system that will deliver a new generation of global coverage high-resolution (better than 10 km and ~6 hourly) SST data products in real time that are tuned to the requirements of modern operational oceanography.

GHRSST-PP data products will be derived by combining complementary Level-2 (L2) satellite and in situ observations to improve spatial coverage, temporal resolution, cross-sensor calibration stability and SST product accuracy through synergy.

Due to the large volumes of data that are considered by the GHRSST-PP and the demanding data product delivery constraints, the GHRSST-PP is designed as a distributed processing system. The strategic implementation concept of regional/global task sharing (RGTS) by regional data product assembly centres (RDAC) interconnected by dedicated, fast data connections has been adopted to underpin the practical implementation of the GHRSST-PP data processing system. RDAC ingest, quality control and merge together existing L2 satellite and in situ data sources to generate regional area coverage quality controlled data products in real-time. Every 6 hours, these data products are consolidated at RDAC and sent to a Global Data Analysis Centre (GDAC) where they are integrated together with other RDAC data streams having an identical data format but covering different geographical areas to provide global coverage data products.

The Medspiration project provided a European RDAC service to the GHRSST-PP during 2004-2006 by generating and disseminating European and Atlantic area SST data products according to the GHRSST-PP Detailed Processing Model (DPM) [AP-1]. In addition, Medspiration served the direct needs of the European SST user community.