QUALITY ASSESSMENT OF SEA LEVEL DATA by the UH SEA LEVEL CENTER/NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC DATA CENTER JOINT ARCHIVE FOR SEA LEVEL Station : St. Peter & Paul Rocks Latitude: 00 55.2N Country : Brazil Longitude: 029 20.6W JASL # : 201A Time Meridian: 030W (GMT - 2 hr) GLOSS # : 199 TOGA #: A022 NODC #: 70020901 Contributor : ORSTOM LOP Museum 43-45 rue Cuvier 75231 Paris Cedex 05 FRANCE Originator : same Original Data: digital Instrmnt Type: Aanderaa WLR5 (bottom-mounted pressure gauge) Digitzd Intvl: one hour Present Data : Hourly, daily, and monthly values obtained by: Hourly : direct digitization, no filter Daily : 119-point convolution filter (Bloomfield, 1976) centered on noon applied to the hourly data with respective periods of the 95, 50, and 5% amplitude points at 124.0, 60.2, and 40.2 hours Monthly: Simple average of all daily values; calculated if 7 or fewer days are missing Span of data : 05 Nov 1982 - 22 Nov 1985 Gaps > 1 mon : none Time Refernce: GMT (00-23 hours) Space-filler Flag :-9999 Units : millimeters Missing Data Flag : 9999 Existing : No Operational : No Sat. Trans. : No Distribution : 1982-1985 Refernce Levl: Due to the nature of the bottom-mounted pressure gauges, no link could be established between the zero of the gauge values and fixed points on land. Also, tide staff observations or the like were unavailable. This series has no long-term reference level. Comment : Although this data set is within the sea level archive, the user must acknowledge that these data represent inferred sea level from a sub- surface pressure gauge, which measures the combined weight of the column of water and air above it. A constant atmospheric pressure has been subtracted, but variations in atmospheric pressure, which would not be sensed by a conventional float/ well gauge, would affect the measurement of the sub-surface pressure gauge. The depth of the instrument in the water was about 11 m. Techniques of data processing by the originator are discussed in the second reference below. 10 meters were subtracted from the original values. The daily values appear reasonable and do not show any reference level shifts or trends. Due to the tendency for pressure gauge sensors to drift, it is beneficial for investigators to know the time span of each instrument deployment (time/date as yyyy/mm/dd/hh(GMT)): start stop 1982/11/05/10 - 1983/02/09/13 1983/02/09/14 - 1983/07/24/13 1983/07/24/14 - 1984/01/22/11 1984/01/22/12 - 1984/08/01/15 1984/08/01/16 - 1985/03/04/14 1985/03/04/15 - 1985/10/23/13 1985/10/23/14 - 1985/11/22/00 For more information: Verstraete, J.M., 1988. Sea level variations in the tropical Atlantic. Time series of ocean measurements, Technical series, UNESCO,4,33-47. Verstraete, J.M., 1992. Accuracy of shallow pressure gauges. Joint IAPSO-IOC Workshop on Sea Level Measurements and Quality Control, Paris, 12-13 October, 1992. IOC Workshop Report No. 81, UNESCO. pp. 70-76. CI MISSING REPLACED GAPS QUESTIONABLE YEAR (%) DATA OR BAD DATA FLUCTUATIONS ---- --- -------------------- --------------- -------------------- 1982 16 none none none 1983 100 none none none 1984 98 15-22 none none 1985 89 none none none