World Ocean Database netCDF files

NOTE: THE PRESENT VERSION OF THE WORLD OCEAN DATABASE NETCDF FILES IS A BETA VERSION. PLEASE HELP US OPTIMIZE THE FORMAT BY CONTACTING US WITH SUGGESTIONS/COMMENTS AT OCL.help@noaa.gov

The World Ocean Database (WOD) is a collection of ocean profile data and associated data from many different sources in a consistent format with quality control flags. Please see WOD documentation for details and definitions.

netCDF is a format commonly used in the oceanographic and climate communities. Please see details.

Each cast (set of profiles/measurements at one occupation of a geographic location) from WOD is placed in its own netCDF file. The file name is of the form wod_UUUUUUUUL.nc,
where UUUUUUUU = WOD unique cast number, a unique number sequentially starting at 00000001,
L = levels,
where O = observed levels, S = standard (interpolated levels).
At present only observed level data are available.

The set of casts from the user request is placed in one or more tar file. There is a separate tar file for each dataset (OSD, CTD, XBT, etc.) and within the same dataset if the file size exceeds 500M in size uncompressed.

Each tar file also contains a file of the form [tar_file_name].nc, where tar_file_name is the name given to the uncompressed tar file. The so named file contains information on the latitude/ longitude, and days since Jan 1., 1770, as well as unique cast number for each cast in the request. days since Jan 1, 1770 is given a missing value (-1000000000) if the days, months, year of the cast is missing.

The tar file is compressed using gzip.

Each individual cast file should be self explaining within the CF conventions of netCDF.