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Global Ocean Heat and Salt Content / Seasonal, Yearly, and Pentadal Fields / Monthly Fields / Heat Content Monthly Basin Time Series

Heat Content Monthly Basin Time Series

The time series of monthly heat content are presented for the 0-700 and 0-2000 meters layers. There is one file of monthly heat content for each of four major oceanic basins: the World Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean (which includes the entire Arctic Ocean), and the Indian Ocean. Each file contains the integral for the entire basin (OB), the northern hemisphere part of the basin (NHPB), and the southern hemisphere part of the basin (SHPB).

The WOA documentation includes information on downloading and reading the data.

Monthly (2005 to present)
File naming conventions:

h22-[Y]0-[Z]m[X1-X2].dat where:

h22 - the label for heat content
Y - ocean basins: w - World, p - Pacific, a - Atlantic, i - Indian
0 - the upper depth of integration ('0' stands for the sea surface)
Z - the lower depth of integration ('700')
m - the label refering to depth in meters
X1-X2 - the month, where: '1-1' for Jan, '2-2' for Feb, etc.
dat - the filename extension

For example, file 'month-h22-w0-700m1-1.dat' contains the time series of January heat content of the 0-700 m layer for the World Ocean

HEAT CONTENT UNITS: 1022 joules
Data format:
Data in each file is organized in column form. Each column corresponds to the time series for ocean basins as outlined below.

1st column - year+0.5 (for the yearly heat content) or mid-point of five-year compositing period (for the pentadal heat content);
2nd column - time series of heat content of OB;
3rd column - time series of the standard error of heat content of OB;
4th column - time series of heat content of NHPB;
5th column - time series of the standard error of heat content of NHPB;
6th column - time series of heat content of SHPB;
7th column - time series of the standard error of heat content of SHPB.

The first line of file contains the labels for each of 7 columns. Read the second line through the last line using an equivalent of the FORTRAN FORMAT (F8.1, 6F8.3) statement.