The Global Ocean Surface Temperature Atlas Plus (GOSTAplus) contains maps of Sea Surface Temperature (SST) climatologies and anomalies, Night Marine Air temperature climatologies and anomalies and Sea Ice coverage.

The data available on the CD-ROM are grouped into four sections:

• Global Ocean Surface Temperature ATLAS-8, or GOSTA 8, a set of SST data in monthly 1° and 5° area grids, for 1856 to 1995.
• ATLAS-7 (or GOSTA 7), an older version of ATLAS-8, with older corrections, covering 1856 to 1991.
• Global sea-Ice and Sea Surface Temperature Version 2.2, (GISST2.2), monthly 1° grids of ice coverage (GICE) and SST for 1903 to 1994.
• Blended monthly 5° Sea Surface Temperature and Land Surface Air temperature Anomaly dataset for 1851-1995, LANDSST.

GOSTAplus is mainly the result of the combination of marine surface temperature data and climatologies from the Met Office and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Some Maps on a 5° latitude x longitude grid are stored as (.GIF files) and can be directly viewed using available visualization tools for UNIX and Mac platforms. A 1° latitude x longitude grid is used for selected regions.

The Met. Office wish to monitor the use of these analyses and require an acknowledgement of the data source if they are used in any publication.

The online application for obtaining a copy of the Met Office GOSTA Plus cdrom includes agreement to the Met Office Conditions of Use. Please note that the Met Office datasets are available for bona fide academic research only (sorry no undergraduates), on a per person per project basis (i.e. all members on a same project who will be using the data must individually apply for access to the data). If you wish to access the Met Office data for commercial or personal purposes, please contact the Met Office directly.

A copy of the GOSTAplus CD-ROM (HDF or BINARY format) is sent to you as soon as your application for accessing the GOSTA data is processed (please ensure that your BADC account details include a full postal address). This will occur within one day of receipt, on the condition that your application is complete and successful. You will receive a confirmation email.

Alternative distributors are the Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Met Office, as indicated below (see Who to Contact).

The data are stored in Hierarchical Data Format (HDF) on the HDF format CD-ROM. Conversion software is available in the HDF Libraries to download and convert the HDF (.hdf) files into ascii (.txt) files.

A Unix BINARY (2 bytes) version of this CD-ROM is now separately available, including read software to convert the raw binary files (.raw) into ascii (.txt) files.

The documentation on the CD-ROM (HDF version) has been extracted and made available through this WWW interface. This gives a detailed description of the data content and processes used to produce the datasets. A description of the HDF data format is provided with information regarding the HDF Read software for reading and using the data. Visualization tools for viewing the Atlas are also available for UNIX and Mac platforms.

The Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Change observational datasets site - www.hadobs.org.

A list of relevant documents is provided. Visit other references to browse the list.

There are a number of sites on the World Wide Web which hold information about GOSTAplus.

The GOSTAplus CD-ROM (HDF version) can be browsed at PO.DAAC.

The GOSTAplus CD-ROM (BINARY version) can also be browsed at PO.DAAC.

Also available from the BADC, are GISST, GICE, MOHMATN4 and MOHSST6 as separate monthly updated datasets. For more details, please refer to the GISST web page at the BADC.

If you have queries about these pages or about obtaining a copy of the GOSTAplus CD-ROM from the BADC then you should contact BADC Support. Your query should be answered within one working day. When follow-up work is required, the BADC support will carry out the work as quickly and efficiently as possible, and in any case, the user will be kept informed of progress.

You may also contact one of the distributors to obtain a copy of the CD-ROM: the Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) or the Met Office.