Irish National Tide Gauge Network (INTGN) 14: Ballycotton Harbour Tide Gauge, Co. Cork, Ireland 2010 - Present

About this dataset

Ballycotton Harbour: A tide gauge was installed in Ballycotton Harbour in 2010, as part of the Irish National Tide Gauge Network. The Marine Institute carried out the installation and has managed and funded the gauge since then. This tide gauge is co-located with a long-term monitoring station for Sea Surface Temperature, of which detailed information and download links can be found here: https://data.marine.ie/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/ie.marine.data:dataset.5324. For detailed site-specific metadata and broader information about the tide gauge network, please see below. Site-specific Metadata: Installation date: 2010 Latitude: 51.82813 Longitude: -8.00080 Mean Sea Level, MSL (relative to Ordnance Datum Malin Head, ODMH) = -0.153 m Lowest Astronomical Tide, LAT, relative to ODMH = -2.203 m Tide Gauge Benchmark, TGBM, relative to ODMH = -3.108 m Tidal range, between low and high mean spring tides = 3.686 m Output parameters: – Time, Latitude, Longitude, Station ID, Data source id – Water level relative to ODMH (in metres) – Water level relative to LAT (in metres) – QC flag Quality controlled data from: 07/10/2010 Automated Near-Real-Time Quality control and visual QC from: 01/09/2024 Irish National Tide Gauge Network (INTGN) Real Time Data: The INTGN is a network of tide gauges located around the Irish coast, collecting water level data to support the development of a permanent tidal monitoring infrastructure. The Marine Institute owns the network and is responsible for the service, maintenance, and quality control of all the network nodes. The Office of Public Works (OPW) and various local authorities contribute data from some additional gauges they have installed but these gauges are outside the control of network management, so are not included within the core MI dataset. The home page for the network is www.irishtides.ie. It is accompanied by a core product, the on-line astronomical prediction system www.irishtides.ie/predict. Each tide gauge has a unique start date, deployment and service history. All the Marine Institute’s gauges are fully serviced, calibrated and operational. International best practice is observed in all operations and proactive maintenance activities. Gauges will be down from time to time pending repair or reinstatement, as appropriate. The following parameters are collected: – Station – DateTime – Water Level (relative to Ordnance Datum Malin Head) *see caveats below – Water Level (above Lowest Astronomical Tide [LAT]) *see caveats below Data from each gauge is transmitted to the Marine Institute in real-time via mobile network connections, is quality controlled and made openly accessible. See below for more details. Quality Statement for TGN Data Processing: Since September 2024, Real-Time data, streamed into the Marine Institute’s database every five minutes, undergoes automated quality control (QC) following QARTOD QC guidelines (https://ioos.noaa.gov/project/qartod/). The automated checks include: – Time format validation – Gross range check – Spike test – Rate of change test – Flatline test – Attenuated signal test – Comparison with model-predicted tidal heights The core principle of real time transmission and display of raw data on www.irishtideres.ie is maintained, and data are never deleted. Instead, each measurement is accompanied by a quality flag indicating whether it is has “no QC”, “good” or “bad” status (0,1 & 4 respectively), based on the SeaDataNet quality flagging system. A user can choose to use or ignore these flags depending on their use case for the data. Approximately every one to two weeks, the data collected by each tide gauge undergoes visual screening by the Marine Institute’s Ocean and Climate Services Section. This process verifies automated flags and identifies any issues missed by the automated QC. A final visual QC flag is then applied. Prior to September 2024, all data was subject to a manual QC routine, which is also represented in the visual-QC flag