Welcome to the Hawaii Ocean Time-series (HOT) Data Base HOT was initially funded by the National Science Foundation, under the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) and the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS), as a 5-year program. A second 5-years of funding were approved in 1994, 3 years more in 1998, and 3 years more in 2001. In 2003 HOT was extended for 5 more years, and is part of the ALOHA Observatory, which is being developed at HOT's station ALOHA. The HOT program makes repeated observations of the physics, biology and chemistry at a site approximately 100 km north of Oahu, Hawaii. Two stations are visited about once a month: Kahe Point (Station 1: 21.34N, 158.27W) and Station ALOHA (Station 2: 22.75N, 158W). Another station, north of ALOHA (Station 3: 23.42N, 158W) was visited regularly from cruise 31 through 58, and a station at Kaena Point (Station 6: 21.85N, 158.36W) was visited from cruise 50 through 66. A station located at the deepest point of the Kauai Basin was occupied during cruise 76 (Station 7: 22.5N, 158.17W). A bottom-moored buoy containing a set of meteorological instruments and an array of underwater instruments was deployed on 11 January 1997 at 22.458N, 158W. This station (Station 8, HALE-ALOHA) has been visited since cruise 80. Several types of data are collected in these stations, including CTD, water samples, XBT, ADCP, and meteorological observations. As part of the HOT program two transect cruises (ALOHA-Climax: AC) have been conducted near the HOT area, from Oahu along the TOPEX line to station Climax (~28N, 155 20'W). AC-1 was conducted on 9-16 July 1996 and AC-2 on 26-30 June 1997. Various stations were occupied during these cruises, and several types of data were collected. CTD casts have been obtained at station HALE-ALOHA during cruises conducted for retrieval and/or re-deployment of the bottom-moored buoy. These casts are used for calibration of the sensors attached to the mooring. Casts were obtained during cruises HALE-ALOHA-1 (HA-1: 11-14 January, 1997), HA-2 (19-21 May, 1997), HA-3 (20-22 December, 1997), and HA-4 (27-30 April, 1998). During this last cruise a near-bottom moored array with Seacats and current-meters was retrieved from a station at the sill between the Maui Deep and the Kauai Deep (Station 9: 22 37.29'N, 156 57.76'W), where a deep CTD cast was conducted. A second deep cast was conducted at the Maui Deep (Station 10: 22 13.5'N, 156 36.5'W). Details of the sampling program can be found in the HOT Data Reports #1-13. For information on how to obtain a copy of these Data Reports, please contact Dave Karl or Roger Lukas at the University of Hawaii (address below); or access them online at http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/HOT_WOCE/data_report.html If you use HOT data in a publication, please contact these same individuals and acknowledge the HOT project (NSF grants OCE-8717195 and OCE-9303094, 9811921 and 0117919). A preprint and reprint of the publications utilizing HOT data would be appreciated. This database is an experiment to put the HOT data set on-line for self-help access. It will allow users to avoid the normal time delays associated with obtaining data from NODC. We encourage you to cite the use of this type of data access in your publications. In order to evaluate this database and to allow us to notify users of any changes or additions, we urge anyone accessing these data to provide us with their names and e-mail addresses. We also welcome comments and suggestions for improvement. Please send this information to: hot@soest.hawaii.edu. HOT data are transmitted to NODC and copied to this database as soon as practical after they have been processed and calibrated. This dataset is thus the most current available HOT data. No data will be released by HOT except through NODC or via this database. The file Current.status lists recent updates to the HOT database. The data are in several subdirectories under /pub/hot (this level). These directories have self-evident names; for example, ctd contains the CTD data, water contains the water bottle samples, xbt contains XBT data. Cruise summaries are under directory cruise.summary. More explicit instructions on each data set are contained in Readme.* files in each subdirectory. Corrections to the data reports are listed in the corrections/Report#.errata (where # is the data report number). Dr. Roger Lukas (WOCE) University of Hawaii Dept. of Oceanography 1000 Pope Road Honolulu, HI 96822 e-mail: rlukas@hawaii.edu Dr. David Karl (JGOFS) University of Hawaii Dept. of Oceanography 1000 Pope Road Honolulu, HI 96822 e-mail: dkarl@hawaii.edu