Descriptions of File Formats Included in this Report

Gzip for .tar .gz and .Z   [ Full description ]
    Gzip (GNU zip) may be used to uncompress .Z or .gz files. Some of the larger data sets have been packaged (using UNIX tar utility), and optionally compressed, to facilitate download of multi-file data sets. Gzip is a compression utility designed to be a replacement for compress (usually available on UNIX, linux and Mac OS 10 and later systems). It is freely available and has been adopted by the GNU project
To uncompress and extract .tar .tar.Z or .tar.gz files on Microsoft Windows systems we recommend the freeware application, PowerArchiver.

MATLAB   [ Full description ]
    MATLAB is a technical computing environment integrating mathematical computing and data visualization to enable scientific data analysis.

Microsoft Office Excel and Word   [ Full description ]
    Excel is the Microsoft Office spreadsheet application and Word is the Microsoft Office word processor application. If desired, data in the Excel spreadsheets can be exported in plain text formats (TSV or CSV) for import into other applications.

NetCDF   [ Full description ]
    NetCDF (network Common Data Form) is an interface for array-oriented data access and a freely-distributed collection of software libraries for C, Fortran, C++, Java, and perl that provide implementations of the interface. The netCDF library also defines a machine-independent format for representing scientific data. Together, the interface, library, and format support the creation, access, and sharing of scientific data. The freely available netCDF software was developed at the Unidata Program Center in Boulder, Colorado. All SMP netCDF data files adhere to the COARDS and GDT conventions.


  netCDF software from Unidata Program Center

  SMP gridded data format guidelines and conventions

  User Manual:  Reading the SMP netCDF Files


ODV   [ Full description ]
    Ocean Data View (ODV) is a freely available software package for the interactive exploration, analysis and visualization of oceanographic and other geo-referenced profile or sequence data. ODV runs on Windows (9x, Me, NT, 2000, XP), UNIX (Solaris, Irix, AIX), Linux and Mac OS-X systems. The data and configuration files are platform-independent and can be exchanged between different systems.

PDF   [ Full description ]
    Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) is a de facto standard for the secure and reliable distribution and exchange of electronic documents and forms around the world, with a ten-year track record. PDF is a universal file format that preserves the fonts, images, graphics, and layout of any source document, regardless of the application and platform used to create it. Adobe® PDF files are compact and complete, and can be shared, viewed, and printed by anyone with free Adobe Reader® software.