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GCOS. They are responsible for collecting and providing the Essential Climate Variables 
(ECVs) in their regions and to support any follow-up action. 
1.2.3 The World Radiation Monitoring Centre (WRMC) 
The Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) is a project of the World Climate Research 
Programme (WCRP), the Global Energy and Water Experiment (GEWEX) and the GCOS. It 
is aimed to detect important changes in the Earth's radiation field at the Earth's surface which 
may be related to climate changes. To fulfil these objectives a central BSRN data archive is 
essential. This archive - called World Radiation Monitoring Centre (WRMC) - was estab 
lished in 1991 under the leadership of Prof. Atsumu Ohmura at the Division of Climate Sci 
ences at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, Switzerland 3 . After 
16 years of nearly continuous operation at ETH, the WRMC went through a transition that 
resulted in the re-establishment of the archive at the AWI, Germany. 
The WRMC at AWI 4 is based on the Publishing Network for Geoscientific & Environmental 
Data PANGAEA. At the moment data from more than 4000 station-month provided from 
more than 40 stations are available. A Google-like interface is used for searching and distrib 
uting BSRN-data via web. Each dataset is identified, shared and published by a persistent 
Digital Object Identifier (DOI). The WRMC at AWI offers output formats separated into radia 
tion data, upper air sounding data and synoptic observations readable for a variety of widely- 
used software. The datasets always include all necessary metadata and citation information. 
Additional, links to the ftp-server 5 , containing the original station-to-archive-files, are availa 
ble. 
1.2.4 The Network for the Detection of Mesopause Change 
In cooperation with the Argentinean organisation CONICET (Consejo Nacional de Investi 
gaciones Científicas y Técnicas) DLR is coordinating the recently established international 
and global Network for the Detection of Mesopause Change (NDMC 6 ) with the mission to 
promote international cooperation among research groups investigating the mesopause re 
gion (-80-100 km height). NDMC connects presently about 50 measurement sites worldwide 
addressing ground-based airglow observations to derive temperature variability at the meso 
pause level. The main climate-oriented goal of NDMC is the early identification of changing 
climate signals (due to the low air density and the efficient infrared radiation cooling to space 
the mesosphere is working as a natural amplifier). NDMC is affiliated with the Global Atmos 
phere Watch (GAW)-program of the WMO and with the Network for the Detection of Atmos 
pheric Composition Change (NDACC) and is officially registered with the GEOSS component 
dedicated to climate, research, monitoring and assessment. NDMC will be further developed 
within the next years to take care for the entire mesosphere. 
1.3 Oceanographic observations 
Oceanographic observations are mainly the responsibility of the BSH and several research 
institutions such as AWI, the Leibnitz Institute of Marine Science (IfM-Geomar), the Centre 
for Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (ZMAW), the Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP- 
Bremen) and others. 
3 http://bsrn.ethz.ch/ 
4 http://www.bsrn.awi.de/ 
5 ftp://ftp.bsrn.awi.de 
6 http://wdc.dlr.de/ndmc