World Ocean Atlas

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The World Ocean Atlas (WOA) is a data product of the Ocean Climate Laboratory of the National Oceanographic Data Center (U.S.). The WOA consists of a climatology of fields of in situ ocean properties for the World Ocean. It was first produced in 19941 (based on the earlier Climatological Atlas of the World Ocean2), with later editions at roughly four year intervals in 19983, 20014 and 20055.

Contents

Dataset

The fields that make up the WOA dataset consist of objectively-analysed global grids at 1° spatial resolution. The fields are three-dimensional, and data are typically interpolated onto 33 standardised vertical intervals6 from the surface (0 m) to the seafloor (5500 m). In terms of temporal resolution, averaged fields are produced for annual, seasonal and monthly time-scales. The WOA fields include ocean temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, apparent oxygen utilisation (AOU), percent oxygen saturation, phosphate, silicic acid, and nitrate. Early editions of the WOA additionally included fields such as mixed layer depth and sea surface height.

In addition to the averaged fields of ocean properties, the WOA also contains fields of statistical information concerning the constituent data that the averages were produced from. These include fields such as the number of data points the average is derived from, their standard deviation and standard error. A lower horizontal resolution (5°) version of the WOA is also available.

Gallery

Annual mean sea surface temperature (WOA 2001)
Annual mean sea surface salinity (WOA 2001)
Annual mean sea surface dissolved oxygen (WOA 2001)
Annual mean sea surface phosphate (WOA 2001)
Annual mean sea surface silicic acid (WOA 2001)
Annual mean sea surface nitrate (WOA 2001)

References

  1. ^ "World Ocean Atlas 1994 series". National Oceanographic Data Center (2008-08-29). Retrieved on 2008-10-22.
  2. ^ Levitus, S. (1982) Climatological Atlas of the World Ocean, NOAA Professional Paper No. 13, pp. 191
  3. ^ "World Ocean Atlas 1998 series". National Oceanographic Data Center (2008-08-29). Retrieved on 2008-10-22.
  4. ^ "World Ocean Atlas 2001". National Oceanographic Data Center (2007-10-04). Retrieved on 2008-10-22.
  5. ^ "World Ocean Atlas 2005". National Oceanographic Data Center (2007-09-12). Retrieved on 2008-10-22.
  6. ^ Standardised intervals are at 0, 10, 20, 30, 50, 75, 100, 125, 150, 200, 250, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000, 1100, 1200, 1300, 1400, 1500, 1750, 2000, 2500, 3000, 3500, 4000, 4500, 5000, 5500 m

See also

External links

Wikipedia content modification information:

  • This page was last modified on 12 November 2008, at 09:26.

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