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First South Atlantic Regional Data Assembly Center
Cape Town, South Africa, May 12-14, 2005


General Information | Agenda | List of participants | Meeting Report

Background information
A meeting took place on November 16, 2004 in Buenos Aires to start the process of organizing the South Atlantic Data Assembly Center. Representatives from South Africa (Carl Wainman, Institute for Maritime Technology), Argentina (Alberto Piola, Fabian Vetere and Ariel Trosi, National Hydrographic Service), Brazil (Edmo Campos, University of Sao Paolo) and the US (Silvia Garzoli, NOAA) were present. French participation was not possible, but a position paper was submitted (Bernard Bourles, IFREMER).

During the meeting the common objectives and interests were discussed, it was decided to call a meeting in May whose objectives are described later, a document was prepared to be sent with the invitation, a list of people to be invited was created, and the site and dates for the first SAADC meeting were proposed.

South Atlantic Regional Data Assembly Center Meeting
The main objective of this meeting is the implementation of the South Atlantic Argo Regional Center (SA-ARC) between countries with interest in the Atlantic from 20N to 50S.
Invitations to the meeting are sent to those individuals from institutions that wish to participate in the activities of the SA-ARC as defined by the 4th Argo Science Team Meeting. Those agreeing to participate are willing to contribute in one or more of the following ways,

Contributions sought
   1. Provision of platforms for deployment.
   2. Provision of local logistic support.
   3. Provision of Argo floats.
   4. Provision of available T and S profile data for Argo calibration and QC purposes.
   5. Provision of data services (centralized metadata base management).
   6. Provision of data products.
   7. Capacity building (including cross-training and technology transfer).
   8. Encourage data collection in data sparse areas through guidance from the Regional Center.

Proposed activities to be carried out by the SA-ARC
   1. Compare all of the Argo data in their region of interest with each other and with the best available recent CTD/hydrographic data.
   2. Provide feedback to the PIs on the performance of individual floats.
   3. Provide standardized QC procedures for all the hydrographic data (CTD, XBT) collected in the area of interest.
   4. Coordinate Argo float deployment plans for the region. Providing advice/guidance on regional deployment needs.
   5. Once data coverage permits, the SA-ARC will develop climatologies and make them available to the rest of Argo community.
   6. Provide documentation of its procedures.
   7. Assess and coordinate regional capabilities and knowledge.
   8. Compare Argo data with model output and with assimilated fields.
   9. Compile and distribute regional metadata.

SA-ARC Organizing Committee