NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM—1965 639 
MAJOR DATA OUT PROJECTS 
BUREAU OF COMMERCIAL FISHERIES PROJECT 
The NODC contribution (20 charts, 1 table, and a bibliography of oceanographic station 
data sources) to the BCF brochure ‘‘Provisional Oceanographic Charts, Tropical Atlantic’’ was pre- 
pared for use by the participants in the IOC Working Group Meeting on International Cooperative 
Investigations of the Tropical Atlantic, which was held at NODC on June 20—23, 1962. This docu- 
ment served as a review of existing information and was of assistance in the planning of cruises, 
particularly in positioning of the station lines and the spacing of the stations along these lines. In 
addition, the NODC ‘‘Proposal for Exchange and Publication of Data and Preparation and Publica- 
tion of an Atlas'’ was accepted with minor modifications by the Working Group. With this proposal, 
NODC is obligated to participate in the EQUALANT | and EQUALANT Il programs. The Data 
Center will accept, process and exchange data with the participants, and prepare and publish Data 
Reports after each synoptic survey; the proposal also included a requirement for the preparation and 
publication of an atlas of the Equatorial Atlantic under the guidance of an International Board of 
Editors. 
DATA EVALUATION PROJECTS 
During the last part of Fiscal Year 1962 the National Oceanographic Data Center undertook 
two data evaluation projects. The first, which is being done for the Office of Naval Research, is 
concerned with evaluations of data obtained during the hurricane CARLA from an unmanned weather 
buoy designated NOMAD (Navy Oceanographic and Meteorological Automatic Device) which was 
moored in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Work was begun at the end of Fiscal Year 1962. 
The NODC will investigate data collected from this weather buoy during the passage of 
hurricane CARLA to assess the value of similar unmanned buoys in the prediction of oceanographic 
conditions during storm surges, abnormal tides, and other extreme oceanographic phenomena 
resulting from hurricanes. 
This project, which is expected to take approximately 9 to 12 months to complete, will have 
as its final product a summary report consisting of text, charts and graphs showing the relative con- 
tribution of a buoy system to the accuracy of analysis of enviromental conditions in an open marine 
area and a marine coastal area. 
The first phase of the second data evaluation project, undertaken for the Navy Underwater 
Ordnance Station (NUOS), was completed during Fiscal Year 1962. This project consists of a 
thorough examination and comparative analysis of historical data and contemporary data collected 
in a deep sea area. Special techniques for manual interpolation of various oceanographic param- 
eters at standard levels were devised. Some of the basic work which has been done manually 
will be programmed for machine plotting in Fiscal Year 1963. It is expected that this project will 
be extended at least 6 months into Fiscal Year 1963 depending on the exact specifications received. 
