World Ocean Database and World Ocean Atlas

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Background

In 1982 the US researcher Syd Levitus published a "Climatological Atlas of the World Ocean" based on a global collection of data that came to be called the World Ocean Database (WOD). Since that time a more-or-less standard set of climatological analyses, based on the WOD, has been developed, called the World Ocean Atlas (WOA). Both the WOD and the WOA are updated and re-published regularly, new WOD/WOA pairs having appeared in 1994, 1998, 2001, 2005, and 2009. Currently the WOD/WOA production activity is officially named the World Ocean Database Project, sanctioned and supported by the U.S. National Oceanographic Data Center, the World Data Center (WDC) System, and the IOC.

World Ocean Database 2009

In its current form, the WOD consists of eleven data collections:

Ocean Station Data (OSD) [Bottle or Nansen cast, low resolution CTD/XCTD, plankton data]
High Resolution CTD/XCTD (CTD)
Expendable Bathythermograph (XBT)
Mechanical Bathythermographs (MBT) [includes Digital Bathythermograph, µBT]
Profiling Floats (PFL)
Drifting Buoys (DRB)
Moored Buoys (MRB) [TAO, PIRATA, others]
Autonomous Pinniped Bathythermographs (APB)
Undulating Oceanographic Recorder (UOR) [Towed CTD]
Surface-Only (SUR) [Bucket, Thermosalinograph]
Glider data (GLD)

There are currently more than 9 million temperature profiles and 3.6 million salinity profiles in WOD09. The complete database can be queried for the data or for detailed metadata descriptions at the WODselect link below.

World Ocean Atlas 2009

In its current form, the WOA consists of objectively analyzed global grids, at standard depths plus 3500, 4500 and 5500m, of the following marine parameters:

Temperature
Salinity
Dissolved oxygen
Apparent oxygen utilisation (AOU)
Percent oxygen saturation
Phosphate
Silicic acid
Nitrate

Grids for statistical parameters associated with the derivation of the objectively analyzed fields are also included. Both 1-degree and 5-degree versions of the WOA are available from the WOAselect link below.

Additional Resources

Wikipedia: World Ocean Database Project - Very brief summary
Wikipedia: World Ocean Atlas - Brief summary article
WODselect - The WODselect retrieval system allows a user to search World Ocean Database 2009 and new data added since its release using a user-specified search criteria. A distribution map and cast count of these search criteria will give the user the option to have the data extracted and placed on the NODC FTP site in the WOD09 native and ".csv" data format
WOAselect - The WOAselect is a selection tool in which the user can designate a geographic area, depth, and oceanographic variable to view climatological means or related statistics for the given variable at the requested depth for the requested geographic area.
WOD and WOA Datasets and Products - A complete listing of all the main product publications
World Ocean Database 2009 Tutorial - A guide to importing data into Ocean Data View version 4.1 or higher.

Subsections of this Article

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Information about this article

Short title: WOD and WOA

Description: none

Expertise level: beginner

Author: Murray.Brown

Approval status: approved

Approved by: Murray.Brown

Last change: 2010-8-5

Subsection of: Marine Climatologies and Atlases

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