4. TOAR data providers

4.1. How can I contribute data to TOAR?

We are always happy to learn about new datasets that we can include in our TOAR database or that we can link in the TOAR data portal. Nevertheless, there are a few conditions before we can accept your data. First, you must make sure that you have the right to distribute the dataset and that we can re-distribute it under the CC-BY4.0 license. If in doubt, please contact us. Furthermore, we can only accept submissions of station data; other types of data can only be linked to via the TOAR data portal. Also, we require at least one full year or two “ozone seasons” of hourly (or higher frequency) measurements and the measured species must be ozone or ozone precursors or basic meteorological variables. And your data must come from well-maintained research-grade instruments, i.e., we do not accept data from low-cost sensor networks - although this may change in the future. Technically, you can either submit data in csv format, send us a link to an API where we can retrieve your data, or send us a database dump. Please adhere to the format specifications dscribed in *** or get in contact with us to find out what needs to be done so that we can accept your data. We are quite flexible and have several reading routines, but we cannot accomodate every possible format. Finally, please ensure that you have sufficiently complete and correct metadata associated with your measurements. Again, we will be happy to help and discuss details with you if you contact us.

4.2. When will my data be inserted into the TOAR database?

At this point, the TOAR database is frozen in preparation of the second TOAR assessment report. All our efforts are now directed to improvingthe data quality and performance of our services. We will still accept new data and inspect it, but the processing will not happen in 2025. The only exeptions will be made for data from Africa, which we will accept until the last possible minute.

4.3. Where do I find the format specification for data submissions?

**LINK**. Please note that, as described above, we may be able to accept data in other formats as well, in particular if you want to submit data from many different sites.

4.4. How flexible are you with respect to the time format? Your recommendation is not exactly ISO and doesn‘t include seconds.

The closer you come to our recommended format, the easier it is for us to insert your data. We can work with the ISO format (including the „T“ between date and time) and you can include seconds in the format. However, seconds will be ignored.

4.5. Do you accept data in resolutions other than hourly?

Hourly is the minimum resolution your data should have. We also accept data in half-hour, 15 minutes, or 10 minutes resolution. They will be automatically aggregated when querying the database. If you have data with a time resolution not listed here, please contact us at toar-data@fz-juelich.de

4.6. If we already submitted data to the GAW data centre. Do we have to resubmit this to TOAR?

GAW data will be harvested from EBAS. We don’t do this regularly. Thus, if you have made a new submission to EBAS, please let us know.