GESLA (Global Extreme Sea Level Analysis) high frequency sea level dataset - Version 2
The dataset contains 39148 years of sea level data from 1355 station records, with some stations having alternative versions of the records provided from different sources. GESLA-2 data may be obtained from www.gesla.org. The site also contains the file format description and other information. The text files contain headers with lines of metadata followed by the data itself in a simple column format. All the tide gauge data in GESLA-2 have hourly or more frequent sampling. The basic data from the US National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) are 6-minute values but for GESLA-2 purposes we instead settled on their readily-available 'verified hourly values'. Most UK records are also hourly values up to the 1990s, and 15-minute values thereafter. Records from some other sources may have different sampling, and records should be inspected individually if sampling considerations are considered critical to an analysis. The GESLA-2 dataset has global coverage and better geographical coverage that the GESLA-1 with stations in new regions (defined by stations in the new dataset located more than 50 km from any station in GESLA-1). For example, major improvements can be seen to have been made for the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas, Japan, New Zealand and the African coastline south of the Equator. The earliest measurements are from Brest, France (04/01/1846) and the latest from Cuxhaven, Germany and Esbjerg, Denmark (01/05/2015). There are 29 years in an average record, although the actual number of years varies from only 1 at short-lived sites, to 167 in the case of Brest, France. Most of the measurements in GESLA-2 were made during the second half of the twentieth century. The most globally-representative analyses of sea level variability with GESLA-2 will be those that focus on the period since about 1970. Historically, delayed-mode data comprised spot values of sea level every hour, obtained from inspection of the ink trace on a tide gauge chart. Nowadays tide gauge data loggers provide data electronically. Data can be either spot values, integrated (averaged) values over specified periods (e.g. 6 minutes), or integrated over a specified period within a longer sampling period (e.g. averaged over 3 minutes every 6 minutes). The construction of this dataset is fundamental to research in sea level variability and also to practical aspects of coastal engineering. One component is concerned with encouraging countries to install tide gauges at locations where none exist, to operate them to internationally agreed standards, and to make the data available to interested users. A second component is concerned with the collection of data from the global set of tide gauges, whether gauges have originated through the GLOSS programme or not, and to make the data available. The records in GESLA-2 will have had some form of quality control undertaken by the data providers. However, the extent to which that control will have been undertaken will inevitably vary between providers and with time. In most cases, no further quality control has been made beyond that already undertaken by the data providers. Although there are many individual contributions, over a quarter of the station-years are provided by the research quality dataset of UHSLC. Contributors include: British Oceanographic Data Centre; University of Hawaii Sea Level Center; Japan Meteorological Agency; US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Puertos del Estado, Spain; Marine Environmental Data Service, Canada; Instituto Espanol de Oceanografica, Spain; idromare, Italy; Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute; Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency, Germany; Finnish Meteorological Institute; Service hydrographique et oc?anographique de la Marine, France; Rijkswaterstaat, Netherlands; Danish Meteorological Institute; Norwegian Hydrographic Service; Icelandic Coastguard Service; Istituto Talassographico di Trieste; Venice Commune, Italy;
INSPIRE
Identification
- File identifier
- 19e0ccbf8e575a139b7b70a6e875ef8b XML
- Hierarchy level
- dataset Dataset
Online resource
Resource identifier
- Metadata language
- EnglishEnglish
- Spatial representation type
- Text, table
Encoding
- Format
- Text or Plaintext
Projection
Classification of data and services
- Topic category
-
- Oceans
- Elevation
Classification of data and services
Coupled resource
Coupled resource
Classification of data and services
Coupled resource
Coupled resource
Keywords
- INSPIRE themes
- MEDIN metadata record availability
- SeaDataNet PDV
- Vertical Coverages
Geographic coverage
N
S
E
W
Temporal reference
Temporal extent
- Begin
- 1846-01-04
- End
- 2015-05-01
Temporal extent
- Date (Publication)
- 2018-05-18
- Date (Creation)
- 2016-08-16
- Date (Revision)
- 2018-02-08
Quality and validity
- Lineage
- Data have been collected from national websites, international data centres and through personal links. The authors of the dataset have not performed extra quality control (QC) on the dataset and have assumed that some form of QC has already been undertaken by the national and other authorities. For further information on how the dataset was constructed and the various sources, see http://gesla.org/. This dataset was passed on to the British Oceanographic Data Centre to be entered into the Published Data Library (PDL) and assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI).
Conformity
Conformity
Conformity
Conformity
Conformity
Conformity
- Explanation
- BODC protocols are based on the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) model enabling BODC to iterate towards compliance with the on-going evolution and development of community requirements including FAIR (Findable,Accessible,Interoperable,Reusable), TRUST (Transparency, Responsibility, User community, Sustainability, Technology) and CARE (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics). Data managers quality assure submissions and assemble the metadata necessary for curation. Submissions (as received) are placed in a long-term accession and stored in triplicate across multiple sites. Appropriate data are transferred into a standard internal format with source variable names mapped to controlled vocabularies, documentation assembled, and metadata loaded into BODC databases. Access to these data is through direct request, the BODC website and through partner repositories such as SeaDataNet. Access control is attained by assigning a data policy to each set of data and this policy is used to administer access when data are requested. Discovery metadata is aligned with EU INSPIRE (through MEDIN) and SeaDataNet community standards. Data are converted to open community formats including Ocean Data View ASCII and SeaDataNet NetCDF, with data described using terms from the NERC vocabulary server. BODC submission agreements are documented on the BODC website and customer service is assured with a dedicated requests team that serve data following local regulations including General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2018 and Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) 2004.
Restrictions on access and use
- Access constraints
- No limitations apply
- Access constraints
- Data are freely available
- Access constraints
- No conditions apply
Responsible organization (s)
Contact for the resource
- Organisation name
- National Oceanography Centre (Liverpool)
- enquiries@noc.ac.uk
- Organisation name
- National Oceanography Centre (Liverpool)
- enquiries@noc.ac.uk
- Organisation name
- British Oceanographic Data Centre
- enquiries@bodc.ac.uk
- Organisation name
- British Oceanographic Data Centre
- enquiries@bodc.ac.uk
Responsible organization (s)
Contact for the resource
- Organisation name
- National Oceanography Centre (Liverpool)
- enquiries@noc.ac.uk
- Organisation name
- National Oceanography Centre (Liverpool)
- enquiries@noc.ac.uk
- Organisation name
- British Oceanographic Data Centre
- enquiries@bodc.ac.uk
- Organisation name
- British Oceanographic Data Centre
- enquiries@bodc.ac.uk
Metadata information
Contact for the metadata
- Organisation name
- British Oceanographic Data Centre
- enquiries@bodc.ac.uk
- Date stamp
- 2021-12-20T06:31:16
- Metadata language
- EnglishEnglish
SDS
Conformance class 1: invocable
Access Point URL
Endpoint URL
Technical specification
Conformance class 2: interoperable
Access constraints
Limitation
Use constraints
Limitation
Responsible custodian
Contact for the resource
Overviews
Spatial extent
N
S
E
W
Provided by
Associated resources
Not available