The steps for providing GHRSST data products and metadata
to the JPL GDAC are listed below:

1) Request an RDAC code from the GDAC if one has not been previously assigned.

2) Produce L2P, L3P or L4 data products to GHRSST specifications as found in the GHRSST Data Processing Specification (GDS) document. The most up-to-date version of this document can be found on the GHRSST Project Office web page (http://www.ghrsst-pp.org). RDACs can test their products using the C or IDL software readers found at : ftp://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/GHRSST/software

3) Produce File Record (FR) metadata for each granule as specified in the GDS. A sample record
can be found here.

4) Produce the Data Set Description (DSD) metadata record as specified in the GDS.
A sample record can be found here.

5) Send samples of steps 2,3 and 4 to the GDAC for inspection. The current contact is edward.m.armstrong /at/ jpl.nasa.gov

6) Once the format of data and metadata have been verified by the GDAC, ingest can begin.
The GDAC prefers a FTP push from the RDAC data providers. Contact Tim McKnight
(txm /at/ seastar.jpl.nasa.gov) in PO.DAAC Operations for a username/password and
procedures for uploading data.

7) All data and metadata files ingested by the GDAC must be accompanied by a
MD5 checksum files (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5) to insure the integrity of the FTP transfer.
Below is a description of the format of these MD5 files:

The MD5 filename should be the name of the original file plus a .md5 extension on the end.

For example, if one were creating an MD5 file for the file:
20061212-AVHRR17_G-NAVO-L2P-SST_s0411_e0604-v01.nc.bz2 the md5 filename would be:

20061212-AVHRR17_G-NAVO-L2P-SST_s0411_e0604-v01.nc.bz2.md5

The contents of the .md5 file are as follows:

[MD5 checksum] [2 whitespaces] [filename]

An example of the contents for the file above is:

e32e499a8fd464dbad52feb79e8b2f3a 20061212-AVHRR17_G-NAVO-L2P-SST_s0411_e0604-v01.nc.bz2.md5

To get a MD5 checksum on the unix command line run

% md5sum [filename]