Welcome to the SCIMS Underway Data home page.  Here, you will find data plots, raw data, processed data and meta data from the SCIMS project on CalCOFI cruises.  The SCIMS project aims to continuously collect surface oceanographic and meteorological data on all CalCOFI cruises.

There are a number of data products available for each cruise:

10 Minute Data: This is the primary data product.  There are 4 surface oceanographic variables (SST, Salinity, Fluorescence and Chlorophyll A concentration) along with date, time and position stamps. Currently, the data is available in 10 minute temporal resolution. Along with this CSV data file, we have a quality flags file that contains the quality control flags for each data point.  There are 3 flags: 9, 3 and 1. 9 is for invalid data, 3 is for questionable data and 1 is for good data.  These are evaluated using a preprocessor that performs simple checks on the data.  Finally, there is a header file that contains the column headings for the data and flags.  Having the header in a separate file makes importing the data into matlab an easier task.  Note that the flags file has 1 extra column than the data file (an extra row quality flag, indicating the trustworthiness of the entire row of data).

Meta Data: This csv file provides the user with information about the sensors involved in the data collection process.

Station Data for Cross Correlation: This is CTD station data and underway surface data, in the same file, sampled from the same location.  This was used in processing to cross correlate the underway data, essentially calibrating it to the CTD standard.  Here we have data, flags and header just like the 10 minute data.

Cross Correlation Data and Plots: In this zip file are a number of plots that illustrate the cross correlation process and the goodness of fit for the particular correlations. These include least squares fits and residuals plotted versus the independent variable.  Also in the zip file is 1 file for each variable that includes the data used to perform the least squares fits.

Charts: Finally, we have the underway track plotted on a map.  The track color varies with one of 4 variable values. Most cruises will have SST, Salinity, Fluorescence and Chlorophyll A plots.  A few cruises (notably most of 2004) did not record fluorescence data, so Fluorescence and Chlorophyll A are not available.

There is data available for the following years:

• 2004
• 2005
• 2006

In the future a number of improvements will be offered, including 10 minute data for all variables collected, not just the 4 most important, and a searchable database of underway data.