RESUMEN
Microplastics (<5 mm) pollution is a growing problem affecting coastal communities, marine ecosystems, aquatic life, and human health. The widespread occurrence of marine microplastics, and the need to curb its threats, require expansive, and continuous monitoring. While microplastic research has increased in recent years and generated significant volumes of data, there is a lack of a robust, open access, and long-term aggregation of this data. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) now provides a global open access to marine microplastics data on an easily discoverable and accessible GIS web map and data portal ( https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/microplastics ). The objective of this data portal is to develop a repository where microplastics data are aggregated, archived, and served in a user friendly, consistent, and reliable manner. This work contributes to NCEI's efforts towards data standardization, integration, harmonization, and interoperability among national and international collaborators for monitoring global marine microplastics. This paper describes the NOAA NCEI global marine microplastics database, its creation, quality control procedures, and future directions.
RESUMEN
The electrical conductivity of the ocean is a fundamental parameter in the electrodynamics of the Earth System. This parameter is involved in a number of applications ranging from the calibration of in situ ocean flow meters, through extensions of traditional induction studies, and into quite new opportunities involving the remote sensing of ocean flow and properties from space-borne magnetometers such as carried aboard the three satellites of the Swarm mission launched in 2013. Here, the first ocean conductivity data set calculated directly from observed temperature and salinity measurements is provided. These data describe the globally gridded, three-dimensional mean conductivity as well as seasonal variations, and the statistics of spatial and seasonal variations are shown. This "climatology" data set of ocean conductivity is offered as a standard reference similar to the ocean temperature and salinity climatologies that have long been available.