ALBERT

Description: Since July 2008, the World Radiation Monitoring Center (WRMC) is hosted at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) of Polar and Marine Research at Bremerhaven, Germany (see http://www.bsrn.awi.de). In mid 2012, 54 BSRN stations submitted their data to the WRMC. The data import is organized in so-called “station-to-archive files” which contain all the data from one station collected during one month. There have been a total of 6806 station-month data sets from 54 stations available in the WRMC in September 2012 while only nine stations delivered their data in 1992. Since 2010 data from 7 new active BSRN stations have been included. All submitted station-to-archive files are read-accessible from any user who accepts the BSRN data release guidelines (see http://www.bsrn.awi.de/en/data/conditions_of_data_release/). The files can be obtained via ftp://ftp.bsrn.awi.de/ by using a web browser or any ftp tool. The access to the public file archive is password-restricted. Read accounts can be obtained from the WRMC (email Gert.Koenig-Langlo@awi.de). An alternative to the ftp access is a data access via the Publishing Network for Geoscientific and Environmental Data, PANGAEA (see http://www.pangaea.de/). Although individual BSRN data sets can be found by using common search engines (e.g., http://www.google.com/) or the specific PANGAEA search engine (http://www.pangaea.de/), the most direct access is given via pre-compiled PANGAEA search phrases (see http://www.bsrn.awi.de/en/data/data_retrieval_via_pangaea/). Since December 2011 the quality of many BSRN parameters can be checked individually by using version 2.0 or newer of the BSRN Toolbox (http://dx.doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.774827). The quality checks offered by the BSRN Toolbox can assist: •the station scientists to test station-to-archive files before they get submitted •the data curator from the WRMC before archiving submitted data •any customer of the WRMC using data extracted from the WRMC Currently, the BSRN Toolbox offers the BSRN Global Network recommended QC tests, V2.0 (http://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.38770.d001). In the beginning of 2012 all data in the WRMC were tested accordingly see: http://www.bsrn.awi.de/en/products/quality_code/physical_possible_limits/. Since December 2011 the WRMC also checks the quality of all incoming data. To avoid too much extra work for the archive the station scientists are recommended to test their data prior to submission. The plan to calculate centrally AOD data from submitted transmission data following the proposal from Bruce Forgan was given up. An updated Technical Plan for BSRN Data Management, including some new parameters such as pyrgeometer temperatures, is under construction.