GTSPP Quality Controlled Subsurface Temperature & Salinity Data 1 Introduction The third session of the NEAR-GOOS Coordinating Committee (August 1998, Beijing) recognized that data quality control is an important aspect to be considered within the NEAR-GOOS system in order to ensure the effective use of the oceanographic data provided by the system. The Committee agreed that cooperation with the Global Temperature and Salinity Profile Project (GTSPP, see https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/global-temperature-and-salinity-profile-programme) should be carried out as a trial for the moment. At a later stage, a data quality control procedure might be incorporated into the NEAR-GOOS system. Therefore, the dataset provided in this directory should be regarded as experimental data and we would highly appreciate the feedback from the users who use the GTSPP dataset for the consideration on the future quality control issue for NEAR-GOOS. This directory contains temperature and salinity profile observation data extracted from the quality controlled dataset provided by Marine Environmental Data Service (MEDS) of Canada, which is responsible for real time data collection and quality control within GTSPP. 2 Data format and files MEDS operationally collects and processes the temperature and salinity profile data in the forms of WMO codes, such as BATHY, TESAC messages via GTS to make quality controlled datasets. MEDS sends them to the NEAR-GOOS Regional Real Time Data Base (RRTDB) every few days. The dataset contains not only the observed values themselves but also the information on the data which should be added to or deleted from or replaced with the archives. RRTDB extracts the all data in the area from 110E to 180E and north of 20N, and processes these update data accordingly to maintain a single file to contain all the most updated data for the last three months, using the add/delete/ replace information. The file name, gtspp.updtMay19, for example, means that the file holds the data updated based on the all information given until 19 May. The data are provided in the original GTSPP format (see https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/global-temperature-and-salinity-profile-programme). To reduce the traffic on the INTERNET, we also provide patch files for the users who retrieve the data regularly and have UNIX system. The patch file, gtspp.patchMay19, for example, contains the information on the difference between gtspp.updtMay19 and the data file updated just before 19 May. The UNIX command, 'patch' is effective to update the latest updated file. For example, the following command: patch gtspp.data < gtspp.patchMay19 updates the gtspp.data, which is the latest updated file just before 19 May in the users system, to the same version as the gtspp.updtMay19.