Release 1 of COADS was created from global marine observations
recorded from 1854 to 1979, and an interim release was created for
the years 1980 to 1990. (Since then Release 1a of the COADS has been
released for the years 1980-1992. This new release contains more
observations than does the interim release and in a new format. Work
is underway to make this new release available in a similar manner.)
The raw data were converted from various formats, sorted, and quality
controlled to eliminate duplicate reports. The initial data processing
resulted in Long Marine Reports (LMR) that contain the complete
observational record. The data were processed further to create various
summarized and compressed data products. One of these products, CMR.5,
contains the data extracted by the CODE program. CMR.5 is a packed
binary version of the most commonly used parts of LMR and consists of
approximately 100 million individual observations.