In the framework of the R/V J. Rioja (Spanish Institute of Oceanography, IEO-CSIC) routine field and monitoring operations on the Cantabrian Sea waters (southern Bay of Biscay), a continuous thermosalinometer (TSG, SeaBird 21) was installed in 2002 as an IEO contribution to the Ferrybox EU-funded project (2002-2005, EC-FP5-EESD nºEVK2-2002-00144). This research vessel has sampled the area in the framework of the IEO monitoring program RADIALES (monthly sampling, https://www.seriestemporales-ieo.net/).

Data was routinely sent to the IEO datacenter and underway data are available from 15th October 2002 to 25th October 2012. During this period, the vessel performed more than 120 monthly sampling cruises with underway TSG data, recording more than 492 000 temperature and salinity lines.

A recent revision, standardization and quality control/quality assessment of the dataset have been performed in the framework of SeaDataCloud project (H2020 INFRARAIA-1-2016-2017, n730960). This includes re-checking the clock, position, vessel speed, and recorded temperature and salinity values, as well as vocabularies that facilitate the accesibility of them. The whole dataset is provided with updated quality flags (QF) that improve their reusability. Monthly datafiles and the QF follow the seadatanet.org standards, as in formats as in vocabularies, in the pursuit of the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) data principles for sharing. At the moment, these data are freely distributed using OGC standard services (WMS, WFS, etc.) through institutional Thredds (http://centolo.co.ieo.es:8080/thredds/catalog/rv/Rioja/catalog.html) and Geoserver (http://centolo.co.ieo.es:8080/geoserver/web/) which facilitates the user's queries, automation of routines (e. g. model validation), and the development and implementation of web services and applications.

Ref:

Viloria, A. Atlas costero de temperatura y salinidad superficial en el Cantábrico. Master thesis. U Vigo (2012). http://hdl.handle.net/10508/15653