Skip to main content

Phosphate - Statistical mean on 1° grid all decades

The Phosphate climatological fields can be downloaded as an individual file or a compressed file of all climatological fields and related statistics. The WOA documentation contains detailed information. The time period, 'All time periods', represents the 1965-2022 time period and does not include data before or after these dates.

Available formats:
Available grids:
Available fields:
Available climatological time periods:

File naming conventions:
woa23_[DECA]_[v][tp][ft][gr].[form_end] - all formats, except NetCDF
woa23_[DECA]_[v][tp]_[gr].[form_end] - NetCDF format
where:
[DECA] - decade
[v] - variable
[tp] - time period
[ft] - field type
[gr] - grid
[form_end] - file name extention
Note: '.dat' - ASCII; '.csv' - comma separated value; '.dbf', '.shp', '.shx' - ArcGIS shape files; '.nc' - netCDF files

Short description of the statistical fields in WOA

  • Objectively analyzed climatologies are the objectively interpolated mean fields for oceanographic variables at standard depth levels for the World Ocean.
  • The statistical mean is the average of all unflagged interpolated values at each standard depth level for each variable in each 1° square which contains at least one measurement for the given oceanographic variable.
  • The number of observations of each variable in each 1° square of the World Ocean at each standard depth level.
  • The standard deviation about the statistical mean of each variable in each 1° square at each standard depth level.
  • The standard error of the mean of each variable in each 1° square at each standard depth level.
  • The seasonal or monthly climatology minus the annual climatology at each 1° square at each standard depth.
  • The statistical mean minus the climatological mean at each 1° square at each standard depth. This value is used as an estimate of interpolation and smoothing error.
  • The number of 1° squares within the smallest radius of influence around each 1° square which contain a statistical mean.
  • The objectively analyzed standard deviation are the resulting fields from objectively analyzing the standard deviation about the statistical mean fields. Only grid boxes that contain 6 or more observations are used in the objective analysis. New for WOA23.
  • The standard error of analysis is one estimate of the uncertainty in the objective analysis. It is computed by calculating the standard error of the differences between the objectively analyzed and statistical mean fields within the 2nd radius of influence (669 km for 1 degree, 267 km for 0.25 degree) New for WOA23.