Assignment 2 (due Feb 2nd 2007)

You are given a 1 degree x 1 degree gridded topographic data set of the globe. The data set is in
meters relative to sea level. Negative values denote below sea level.

A) Describe the steps you would use to calculate the volume of ocean water on the planet.


B) - obtain this data set by ftp to www-esd.lbl.gov (or on class webpage) and do the calculation of volume for ocean
water on the planet. NB the data sets and documentation are plain (ascii) text.  provide
documentation on how you did the calculation. 

NB (excel is limited to 256 columns of data - the last time I looked), in spite of this people
were able to get results via excel by parsing the first 180 columns and then the second 180
columns and adding the results.

A simple program in matlab, c, basic, pacal, fortran, java... will do the job easily. If you go
this route submit the program with your answer.

        ===============================================

Getting the data:

by firefox, mozilla, safari, or explorer: 

   url: ftp://www-esd.lbl.gov/pub/bishop/EPS103_203
   click on each of two files. use save as menu option.

by ftp: 

ftp www-esd.lbl.gov
Connected to esd.lbl.gov.
220 esd.lbl.gov FTP server (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - Earth Sciences Division) ready.
Name (www-esd.lbl.gov:bishop): anonymous
331 Guest login ok, send ident as password.
Password: [your email address will do here]
230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.
ftp> cd pub/bishop/EPS103_203
ftp> dir
200 PORT command successful.
150 ASCII data connection for /bin/ls (128.3.14.11,63071) (0 bytes).
total 790
-rw-r--r--   1 1076     users        352 Sep 12 06:09 topodocumentation
-rw-r--r--   1 1076     users     388980 Sep 12 06:03 wm60min.180x360.grid
226 ASCII Transfer complete.
275 bytes received in 0.02 seconds (13.32 Kbytes/s)
ftp> mget *
ftp> quit