World Ocean Database 2013 (NCEI Accession 0117075)

The World Ocean Database (WOD) is the World’s largest publicly available uniform format quality controlled ocean profile dataset. Ocean profile data are sets of measurements of an ocean variable at a single geographic location within a short (minutes to hours) temporal period in some portion of the water column from the surface to the bottom. To be considered a profile for the WOD, there must be more than a single depth/variable pair. Multiple profiles at the same location from the same set of instruments is an oceanographic cast. There are more than 13 million oceanographic casts in the WOD 2013 (WOD13) initial release, from the second voyage of Captain Cook (1772) to the modern Argo floats (end of 2012). Ocean variables in the WOD13 include temperature, salinity, oxygen, nutrients, tracers, and biological variables such as plankton and chlorophyll. Quality control procedures are documented and performed on each cast, the results included as flags on each measurement. The WOD13 presents data in Climate-Forecast netCDF ragged array format for ease of use mindful of space limitations. The WOD13 contains the data on the originally measured depth levels (observed) and interpolated to standard depth levels to present a more uniform iso-surface for oceanographic and climate work.