1. World Ocean Database, World Ocean Atlas, and Regional Climatologies
Ocean Climate Laboratory Team/NODC

2. Outline The size and shape of a global ocean profile database
Data Archeology and Rescue
Data flow into and out of a global ocean profile database
NODC products from global ocean database

3. World Ocean Database (WOD)
A quality controlled collection of ocean profiles, plankton tow , and ship-based surface measurements from 1772-present.

4. Instrument types in WOD
Variables in WOD
Instrument types in WOD
1) temperature
2) salinity
3) oxygen
4) phosphate
5) nitrate
6) nitrate + nitrite
6) silicate
5) chlorophyll
6) pH
7) alkalinity
8) pCO2
9) TCO2
Plankton
11) CFCs 11, 12, and 113
12) Tritium
13) Helium (noble gas)
14) ΔHe-3 (isotope)
15) ΔC-13 (isotope)
16) ΔC-14 (isotope)
17) Argon (noble gas)
18) Neon (noble gas)
19) O-18 (isotope)
20) Beam Attenuation Coefficient (transmissivity)
1) Station Data (bottles, thermometers)
2) CTD
3) XBT
4) MBT
5) Towed CTD
6) Profiling Floats
7) Drifting buoy (thermistor chains)
8) Moored buoy (e.g., TAO, PIRATA TRITON)
9) Autonomous Pinniped (instrumented
elephant seals)
10) Gliders
Blue: Quality control beyond automatic checks

5. WOD by Instrument Type

6. Temperature Data During Peak of Different
Observing Systems
1934 : Nansen Cast
1960 : MBT
1985 : XBT
Red=Nansen Cast /CTD[1890s/1964]
Light Blue=MBT [1939]
Dark Blue=XBT [1967]
Green=Argo float [2001]
Orange=Tropical buoy [1984]
2009 :
Argo

7. Measurements vs. Depth WOD13
Measurements (X105)
Measurements (X104)
Depth (m)
Depth (m)

8. World Ocean Database Contains contributions from national
data centers, universities, special projects,
fisheries, navies, government agencies, individual scientists, merchant ships etc.
Data found on internet, index cards, glass slides, outdated computer media, published cruise reports, etc.
Original data must be accessible in the NODC archive/permission must be obtained for all data

9. Data Archeology and Rescue
Nansen’s Arctic expedition,
Fram (1892 – 1912)
Trial cruise
Photo: wikipedia
Amundsen’s South Pole expedition,
* No data from Sverdrup’s Canadian Archipelago expedition ( )
5 accessions, 3 cruises

10. Near-real time data from GTSPP: 2013
Green – XBT (8,340 casts)
Red – CTD (14,521 casts)
Blue - Pinniped (3,970 dives)
Turquoise – Glider (20,499 half cycles)

11. Examples of Delayed-mode data Updates to WOD
ICES
CCHDO
Blue – Quarterly
Orange- Yearly
Green - Irregular
WHOI Ice
Tethered Buoys
TAO maintenance
cruises
CalCOFI
World Ocean
Database Quarterly
Updates
NOAA
Northeast
Fisheries
Japan Ocean
Data Center
INIDEP
(Argentina)
CSIRO
Line W

12. Data Dissemination:
Yearly by instrument
Geographically by instrument
WODselect
All updated quarterly
Format:
Native WOD format
(compact ASCII) with conversion
routines
netCDF -> feeds into
NODC Geoportal/THREDDS server
Working now on subset dissemination through Geoportal

13. FEEDBACK LOOP Science and Data Community OCL/NODC Publish Results
MAKE DATA AVAILABLE
Convert Data to Common
Format/Initial Quality Control
Calculate Climatologies
Secondary Quality Control
Release Database
With Quality Control Flags
Scientific Research
Post-release Quality Control
Monthly database updates
Publish Results
FEEDBACK LOOP

14. WOA13 salinity at 50 m depth for years 2005-2012
WOA13 temperature at 100 m depth at 1/4° grid resolution

15. WOA13: Increased horizontal and vertical resolution
Gulf Stream Example

16. NODC Regional Climatologies
Up to date, four regional climatologies have been completed and published at NODC web site. Gulf of Mexico (a supplement to the Gulf of Mexico Digital Atlas), the East Asian Seas Climatology, the Arctic and most recently Greenland-Iceland-Norwegian Seas
NODC existing and intended regional climatologies in the Northern Hemisphere in FY12-FY16 (the Nordic Seas Atlas is a collaborative NODC-AARI –University of Bergen project).
NODC Regional Climatology Team: Seidov, D., O.K. Baranova, M. Biddle, T.P. Boyer, D.R. Johnson, A.V. Mishonov and M. Zweng

17. GINS Regional Climatology
The Greenland, Iceland and Norwegian Seas (GINS) – the gateways for water exchange between the North Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic – play a key role in the entire high-latitudinal ocean climate formation and change.
To provide an improved oceanographic foundation and reference for multi-disciplinary studies of the GINS, NODC Regional Climatology Team developed a new set of high-resolution quality-controlled long-term annual, seasonal and monthly mean temperature and salinity fields on different depth levels.
Temperature and currents schema at 200 m
(Eldevik et al, 2009)

18. Northwest Atlantic (NWA) Regional Climatology(SMECC; NODC FY14 - work in progress)
The NWA high-resolution regional climatology is a part of the NOAA-wide Sustained Marine Ecosystem in Changing Climate (SMECC) Project.
NODC Regional Climatology Team1 developed a new set of high-resolution quality-controlled long-term annual, seasonal and monthly mean temperature and salinity fields on different depth levels.
This new regional climatology is based on the World Ocean Database 2013 archive of temperature and salinity from observations spanning over more than a hundred years and incorporates a great deal of new data not previously available.
High-resolution NWA regional climatology provides quality-controlled temperature and salinity on 87 levels with 1/10°x1/10° grid resolution.
NODC NWA web site screenshot (web site is under construction).

19. High-resolution “all-time” NWA climatology
At the moment, the “all-time” NWA climatology has been completed on 1/10x1/10° grid. “All-time” means the climatology was compiled using all available data. There will be decadal climatologies compiled for six decades from to (the last “decade” has only eight years of data). The decades and will be completed by the end of FY14, while earlier decades are due in FY15.
Annual temperature at the surface from NWA regional climatologies with 1°x1°, 1/4°x1/4° and 1/10°x1/10° grid resolution show dramatic improvements provided by high-resolution climatology.
1°x1°
1/4°x1/4°
1/10°x1/10°
Annually-averaged climatological sea surface temperature (°C)

21. Thank you