The FDSN Action Group on Marine Seismology Data and Metadata Standards

Marine seismology data are crucial to studying many local, regional and global scale processes, including subduction, ocean crust accretion, interplate volcanism, deep and shallow hot-spots, mantle circulation and global earth structure, as well as mid-ocean ridge and transform fault seismicity. Marine seismology data are often subtly but significantly different than land data: the dataloggers suffer clock drift (there is no GPS signal at the ocean floor), the sensors are usually not oriented with respect to geographic north, and there are unique noise and signal sources (ocean waves, seafloor currents, ships, whales...). These data should be distributed by Federation of Digital Seismology Networks (FDSN)-standard data centers and they should be packaged/explained so that all seismologists can easily use them. The FDSN Action Group on Marine Seismology Data and Metadata Standards is developing an international standard for these data and metadata, in addition to a list of validated open-source tools for marine-specific processing tools. The Action Group aims to propose these standards at the summer 2025 Lisbon IASPEI meeting.  Here, we present the current state of the proposed standards and invite you to use them, comment on them and/or suggest additions to them.