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The World Ocean Atlas (WOA) is a
data In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete Value_(semiotics), values that convey information, describing quantity, qualitative property, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of sy ...
product of the
Ocean Climate Laboratory The National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) was one of the national environmental data centers operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The main NODC facility was located in Silv ...
of the
National Oceanographic Data Center The National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) was one of the national environmental data centers operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The main NODC facility was located in Sil ...
(
U.S. The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
). The WOA consists of a
climatology Climatology (from Greek , ''klima'', "place, zone"; and , ''-logia'') or climate science is the scientific study of Earth's climate, typically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of at least 30 years. This modern field of study ...
of
fields Fields may refer to: Music * Fields (band), an indie rock band formed in 2006 * Fields (progressive rock band), a progressive rock band formed in 1971 * ''Fields'' (album), an LP by Swedish-based indie rock band Junip (2010) * "Fields", a song b ...
of ''
in situ ''In situ'' (; often not italicized in English) is a Latin phrase that translates literally to "on site" or "in position." It can mean "locally", "on site", "on the premises", or "in place" to describe where an event takes place and is used in ...
''
ocean The ocean (also the sea or the world ocean) is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of the surface of Earth and contains 97% of Earth's water. An ocean can also refer to any of the large bodies of water into which the wo ...
properties for the
World Ocean The ocean (also the sea or the world ocean) is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of the surface of Earth and contains 97% of Earth's water. An ocean can also refer to any of the large bodies of water into which the worl ...
. It was first produced in 1994 (based on the earlier ''Climatological Atlas of the World Ocean''), with later editions at roughly four year intervals in 1998, 2001, 2005, 2009, and 2013.


Dataset

The fields that make up the WOA dataset consist of objectively-analysed
global Global means of or referring to a globe and may also refer to: Entertainment * ''Global'' (Paul van Dyk album), 2003 * ''Global'' (Bunji Garlin album), 2007 * ''Global'' (Humanoid album), 1989 * ''Global'' (Todd Rundgren album), 2015 * Bruno ...
grids at 1 °
spatial resolution In physics and geosciences, the term spatial resolution refers to distance between independent measurements, or the physical dimension that represents a pixel of the image. While in some instruments, like cameras and telescopes, spatial resolut ...
. The fields are
three-dimensional Three-dimensional space (also: 3D space, 3-space or, rarely, tri-dimensional space) is a geometric setting in which three values (called ''parameters'') are required to determine the position of an element (i.e., point). This is the informa ...
, and data are typically
interpolated In the mathematical field of numerical analysis, interpolation is a type of estimation, a method of constructing (finding) new data points based on the range of a discrete set of known data points. In engineering and science, one often has a n ...
onto 33 standardised vertical intervalsStandardised 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 from the surface (0 m) to the
abyssal The abyssal zone or abyssopelagic zone is a layer of the pelagic zone of the ocean. "Abyss" derives from the Greek word , meaning bottomless. At depths of , this zone remains in perpetual darkness. It covers 83% of the total area of the ocean a ...
seafloor The seabed (also known as the seafloor, sea floor, ocean floor, and ocean bottom) is the bottom of the ocean The ocean (also the sea or the world ocean) is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of the surface of Earth an ...
(5500 m). In terms of temporal resolution, averaged fields are produced for annual,
season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and ...
al and monthly time-scales. The WOA fields include ocean
temperature Temperature is a physical quantity that expresses quantitatively the perceptions of hotness and coldness. Temperature is measurement, measured with a thermometer. Thermometers are calibrated in various Conversion of units of temperature, temp ...
, salinity,
dissolved oxygen Oxygen saturation (symbol SO2) is a relative measure of the concentration of oxygen that is dissolved or carried in a given medium as a proportion of the maximal concentration that can be dissolved in that medium at the given temperature. It ca ...
, apparent oxygen utilisation (AOU), percent
oxygen saturation Oxygen saturation (symbol SO2) is a relative measure of the concentration of oxygen that is dissolved or carried in a given medium as a proportion of the maximal concentration that can be dissolved in that medium at the given temperature. It ca ...
,
phosphate In chemistry, a phosphate is an anion, salt, functional group or ester derived from a phosphoric acid. It most commonly means orthophosphate, a derivative of orthophosphoric acid . The phosphate or orthophosphate ion is derived from phosph ...
,
silicic acid Silicon dioxide, also known as silica, is an oxide of silicon with the chemical formula , most commonly found in nature as quartz and in various living organisms. In many parts of the world, silica is the major constituent of sand. Silica is one ...
, and nitrate. Early editions of the WOA additionally included fields such as mixed layer depth and
sea surface height Ocean surface topography or sea surface topography, also called ocean dynamic topography, are highs and lows on the ocean surface, similar to the hills and valleys of Earth's land surface depicted on a topographic map. These variations are ex ...
. 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 The standard error (SE) of a statistic (usually an estimate of a parameter) is the standard deviation of its sampling distribution or an estimate of that standard deviation. If the statistic is the sample mean, it is called the standard error o ...
. A lower horizontal resolution (5°) version of the WOA is also available. The WOA dataset is primarily available as compressed
ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because ...
, but since WOA 2005 a
netCDF NetCDF (Network Common Data Form) is a set of software libraries and self-describing, machine-independent data formats that support the creation, access, and sharing of array-oriented scientific data. The project homepage is hosted by the Unidat ...
version has also been produced.


Gallery

File:WOA09 sea-surf TMP AYool.png, Annual mean sea surface temperature (WOA 2009) File:WOA09 sea-surf SAL AYool.png, Annual mean sea surface salinity (WOA 2009) File:WOA09 sea-surf O2 AYool.png, Annual mean sea surface dissolved oxygen (WOA 2009) File:WOA09 sea-surf PO4 AYool.png, Annual mean sea surface phosphate (WOA 2009) File:WOA09 sea-surf H4SIO4 AYool.png, Annual mean sea surface silicic acid (WOA 2009) File:WOA09 sea-surf NO3 AYool.png, Annual mean sea surface nitrate (WOA 2009) File:WOA09 1000m AOU AYool.png, Annual mean apparent oxygen utilization at 1000 m depth (WOA 2009)


See also

*
CORA dataset CORA (standing for Coriolis Ocean database ReAnalysis) is a global oceanographic temperature and salinity dataset produced and maintained by the French institute IFREMER. Most of those data are real-time data coming from different types of platform ...
* European Atlas of the Seas * Geochemical Ocean Sections Study (GEOSECS) * Global Ocean Data Analysis Project (GLODAP) *
World Ocean Circulation Experiment The World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) was a component of the international World Climate Research Program, and aimed to establish the role of the World Ocean in the Earth's climate system. WOCE's field phase ran between 1990 and 1998, and ...
(WOCE)


References


External links


NODC Ocean Climate Laboratory datasets and products
{{physical oceanography Chemical oceanography * Oceanography World Ocean