Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System

NOTICE! While the Direct Access option to extract data from the GCOOS Data Portal provides flexibility and allows the download of most recent data, it can be slow. Pre-generated CSV files are also available on the GCOOS WAF facility. We encourage users to use the GCOOS WAF to download monthly summaries. Data in netCDF4 data format is also available for data summarized by platforms or stations. Whenever possible, the GCOOS 52N SOS is most appropriate for machine-to-machine communications or as the endpoint to applications that support OGC SOS 2.0.

Data Call Interactive

The following is a form to interactively retrieve data using a form (see the tab on Data Call Instructions for more on this). To retrieve data, simply provide the inputs and click on the [Retrieve Data] button to generate the CSV file.

Spatial Coverage
(The default values provided are the coordinates for a full coverage of the Gulf of Mexico. You may use the map in the introductory page to get new coordinates if necessary.)

	North
West	+	East
	South

Temporal Coverage
(The date and time inputs will not be validated when retrieving records.)

	Year (YYYY)	Month	Day (DD)	Hour (HH)	Minutes (MM)	Seconds (SS)
From
To

Observation
NOTE: All observations are served by this portal as they become available. The list can change. If 'Currents' is selected, direct access limits the range to the last 3 days of observation due to the size of the return. Contact GCOOS if access to historical data older than 3 days are needed, or use the GCOOS WAF.

Select the observation to retrieve:

QC Flags

The QC flag is composed of 8 digits that correspond to the following QC test performed:

timing/gap test: measured and received within the expected time window,
syntax test: data stream is structured properly,
location test: check for reasonable geographic location,
gross range test: data point exceeds sensor or operator selected range,
climatology test: data point falls within seasonal expectations,
spike test: data point exceeds a selected threshold relative to adjacent data points,
rate of change test: excessive rise or fall, and
flatline test: test for invariant value.

The flags can either be: 1-pass/good data, 2-not evaluated, 3-suspect or of high interest, 4-fail/bad data and 9-missing data. For more information on the QC tests, please visit: https://ioos.noaa.gov/project/qartod/.

Check to include the QC flags

Data Source
NOTE: Only data obtained by the GCOOS data portal can be served.

Select the data source to retrieve:

Output Format
NOTE: Only CSV format is supported to date.

Select the output format: and sorted by:

Data Call Instructions to get Headers

The following is a direct call syntax to get headers for GCOOS assets:

Synrtax

http://data.gcoos.org/get_gcoos_assets.php?source={1}&extension={2};

where

{1} optional: can either be a blank (default) to get all assets, 'federal' to get only federal assets or'non-federal' to list only non-federal assets.
{2} optional: default is 'false' and can be equal to 'true' to get additional platform information such URN, URL, URL for RSS feed, image and short text label of the platform.

Example:

To get all assets: http://data.gcoos.org/get_gcoos_assets.php
To get all federal assets: http://data.gcoos.org/get_gcoos_assets.php?source=federal
To get all non-federal assets: http://data.gcoos.org/get_gcoos_assets.php?source=non-federal

To get all non-federal assets with additional platform data: http://data.gcoos.org/get_gcoos_assets.php?source=non-federal&extension=true

Data Call Instructions to get Observation

The following is the syntax for direct data retrieval from GCOOS repository.

Syntax:

http://data.gcoos.org/get_gcoos_data.php?bbox={1}&start={2}&stop={3}&obs={4}&source={5}&fmt={6}&sortBy={7}&qc={8}
where:

{1} westlon,southlat,eastlon,northlat, where:

westlon = longitude of western edge of bounding box expressed as a floating point number

southlat = latitude of southern edge of bounding box expressed as a floating point number

eastlon = longitude of eastern edge of bounding box expressed as a floating point number

norhtlat = latitude of northern edge of bounding box expressed as a floating point number

{2} start date formatted as YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ

{3} stop date formatted as YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ

{4} observation to retrieve

air_pressure: for barometric readings

air_temperature: for air temperature readings

chlorophyll: for chlorophyll readings

current: for the ocean current data (speed, direction, meridional and zonal velocities)

do: for disolved oxygen and concentrations

relHumidity: relative humidity readings

salinity: for salintity measurements

turbidity: turbidity measurements

water_level: water level measurements

water_temperature: for water temperature data

waves: wave readings

winds: for winds (speed, direction and gust)

{5} data source which may either be: All, COMPS, TABS, DISL, WAVCIS, FWRI, TCOON, LUMCON, ADCP, NDBC, Scripps, CenGOOS, NERRS, SCCF RECON, COAPS, NOS, ENP, LOOP, FIT, Shell

{6} desired output format. Only csv is currently supported.

{7} ascending sort order:

dates: sort the output by dates;
provider: sort the ouput by data provider, then dates; or
station: sort the output by the name of the station.

{8} QC flag:

on: QC flags will be exported with each data (1: good; 1: not evaluated, not available or unknown; 3: questionable; 4: bad; 9: missing data)

not set: this is the default and no QC flag will be exported

Example:

To access the water temperature data in the repository for all the Gulf region for the period November 01, 2008 (time: 00:00:00 UTC) to November 15, 2008 (23:59:59 UTC) and sorted by dates, the call should be: http://data.gcoos.org/get_gcoos_data.php?bbox=-98.4,21.7,-80.5,31.0&start=2008-11-01T00:00:00Z&stop=2008-11-15T23:59:59Z&obs=water_temperature&source=All&fmt=csv&sortBy=dates&qc=on

Directly Accessing GCOOS Database

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