World Ocean Database and World Ocean Atlas
Sydney Levitus1, Tim P. Boyer1, John I. Antonov1, Hernán E. García1, Daphne R. Johnson1, Ricardo A.
Locarnini1, Alexey V. Mishonov1, Dan Seidov1, Olga K. Baranova1, Igor V. Smolyar1, Melissa. M. Zweng1
(1)
National Oceanographic Data Center, NOAA E/OC5,
1315 East West Highway, Silver Spring, MD, 90210, U.S.A.,
Sydney.Levitus@noaa.gov
1.
WORLD OCEAN DATABASE
The World Ocean Database (WOD) is the largest
collection of quality-controlled ocean profile data
available without restriction. WOD is constructed and
maintained by the U.S. National Oceanographic Data
Center and its co-located World Data Center for
Oceanography. The WOD contains data for 25 different
variables including temperature, salinity, oxygen,
nutrients, and tracers among others. These data have
been measured with several different types of
instrument systems including water bottle samplers,
reversing thermometers, CTDs, XBTs, MBTs, profiling
floats, gliders, moored buoys, and drifting buoys among
others.
4.
SUPPORT FOR THE “WORLD OCEAN
DATABASE” PROJECT
WOD has been made possible by international
cooperation with countries exchanging data under the
aegis of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic
Commission (IOC). In particular a great deal of
historical ocean data has been “rescued” as a result of
the IOC “Global Oceanographic Data Archaeology and
Rescue” (GODAR) project [1]. WOD continues to
grow and WOA will have improved vertical resolution
in the future.
500
450
WOD05 + WOA05
3.
CLIMATE CHANGE AND ADVISING
GOVERNMENTS
The scientific community is advising governments
about global climate variability and global climate
change. Thus, the community needs to have access to
the most comprehensive ocean profile databases
possible. All data from ocean observing systems need to
be permanently archived with appropriate metadata.
WOD98 + WOA98
350
WOA94
Clim. Atlas of the World Ocean (1982)
300
250
200
Total Number of Citations = 5,925
150
100
50
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
1990
1989
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1984
0
1983
The data in WOD and products based on WOD such as
the World Ocean Atlas (WOA) climatologies have
proven to be of great value to the oceanographic,
climate, and geodetic communities. These products are
used in ocean climate diagnostic studies, as boundary
conditions in ocean circulation models, for ocean data
assimilation studies, and as “sea-truth” for satellite
altimetry studies among others. The effect of WOD and
WOA can be quantified by a count of citations in the
peer-reviewed scientific literature of the WOD and
WOA atlases and their predecessor “Climatological
Atlas of the World Ocean”. Figure 1 shows that since
1982 these products have been cited more than 5,900
times. It is clear that global compilations of
oceanographic data and analyses of these compilations
are of great value to the science community.
WOD01 + WOA01
400
METRIC FOR THE UTILITY OF THE
WORLD OCEAN DATABASE
# Citations
2.
Year
Figure 1. Citations of NODC databases and atlases as a
function of time based on a search of the Scientific
Citation Index.
1. Levitus, S., Sato, S., Maillard, C., Mikhailov, N., Caldwell,
P., and Dooley, H. (2005). Building ocean profile-plankton
databases for climate and ecosystem research. NOAA Tech.
Report 117, 29 pp. (Available from NODC/NOAA, E/OC5,
1315 East West Highway, Silver Spring MD, 20910, U.S.A.).