    Oceanographic profile data in the vicinity of the Deepwater Horizon wellhead

  [Please note that the oceanographic profile data were assembled to help
   with the tracking and understanding the effects of the Deepwater Horizon
   oil spill.  Not all the data have been rigorously quality controlled.]

  Oceanographic profile data from the World Ocean Database (WOD) 
  http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/WOD/pr_wod.html

  in the Gulf of Mexico between 91W and 86W and 26N and 31N for all years.

  Files are split by data type (OSD=ocean station data: bottle and low resolution 
  CTD data.  Includes temperature, salinity, oxygen, chlorophyll, nutrients.
  CTD=Conductivity, temperature, depth instrument, includes temperature,
  salinity, oxygen and fluorescence [although there are no WOD
  fluorescence data in the area.]. XBT=expendable bathythermographs,
  temperature only, MBT=mechanical bathythermographs, temperature only,
  and PFL=profiling floats, with temperature and salinity data.)  See the
  WOD Introduction ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/WOD09/DOC/wod09_intro.pdf
  for more information about instrumentation.

  Files come in two different formats.  Files of the form
  GoM.O.DDD and GoM.S.DDD are in WOD native format.  There 
  are format descriptions, programs, and tools for converting and analyzing
  data in this format accessible from the main WOD webpage.
  .O. signifies observed level data, measured values at original measurement depths.
  The .O. files have been compressed (gzip) due to their large size.
  .S. signifies standard level data, interpolated (when necessary) to 40 standard
  depths from the ocean surface to 9000 meters.  The standard depths are

     depth[m] = { 0, 10, 20, 30, 50, 75, 100, 125, 150, 200, 250,
                  300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000, 1100,
                  1200, 1300, 1400, 1500, 1750, 2000, 2500, 3000,
                  3500, 4000, 4500, 5000, 5500, 6000, 6500, 7000,
                  7500, 8000, 8500, 9000 };

  DDD signifies the 3-letter dataset descriptor (see above).
  
  The other format in files of the form GoM_[variable_name].DDD.csv
  where variable names are temp=temperature (degC), sal=salinity (PSS-78),
  oxy=oxygen (ml/l), chl=chlorophyll (mg/m^3).  This format is a csv
  format as follows:

  ISO_country,Cruise_ID,Latitude,Longitude,Year,Month,Day,Time,WOD_unique, variable at each
  standard level from the surface to the end of the profile.

  ISO_country and Cruise_ID combine to give a unique cruise identifier.  WOD_unique is
  a unique number assigned to the given oceanographic cast.  For more information, please
  see the WOD introduction.
