Oceanographic and meteorological data is at the heart of PFEG's research. While collecting and processing data for its research efforts, the PFEG has made extra efforts to make data available for fisheries and other researchers. We chose not to repeatedly access and rely on the formal data resources of the FNMOC, which included hundreds of products and thousands of observations of little or no interest to our researchers. Instead, we extracted subsets of interest from those archives and maintained our own informal archives of data and model products. These informal archives were established for efficiency, consistency, and repeatability. The data and products were retained and used on the FNMOC systems in the form as acquired, using applications we developed along with tools developed by the Navy to produce a suite of monthly and special products, e.g., the Bakun Upwelling Index.
For some time the FNMOC has been undergoing a transition to modernize their operational computer systems environment from the once high-end (but now outdated) Control Data Corporation CYBER mainframes, to a mix of Cray supercomputers and Sun workstations. In response to those changes, we have, over the last year or so, been in the process of PFEG application and archive conversion and transfer to the IT-95 server at our Pacific Grove site. We can now report that those archival sets have been successfully transferred and that communication paths are in place to assure continued access to the data and products from the Navy.
When the IT-95 project was established to provide communication linkages and data paths between NMFS sites, a significant factor in selecting the PFEG as a principal node on the IT-95 wide area network was certainly the long historical relationship with the Navy and consistent and ready access to data and products from the Navy. Successful conversion of monthly and special applications, completion of the PFEG archival transfer, and establishment of near real-time data acquisition from the FNMOC, centers the processing action onto the IT-95 server. This will also allow, in the longer term, development of new index time series from the archives by modifying computer programs presently being converted. (A. Stroud, [831]-648-9037).