Monitoring Ocean Climate with World Ocean Database

MSU Affiliation

College of Arts and Sciences; Department of Geosciences

Creation Date

2025-11-03

Abstract

The World Ocean Database (WOD) is the world's most extensive collection of quality-controlled ocean profile and plankton data that includes measurements of temperature, salinity, oxygen, phosphate, nitrate, silicate, chlorophyll, alkalinity, pH, pCO2, TCO2, Tritium, Freon, Helium, Neon, and plankton. WOD is updated four times per year and available without restriction. WOD is the foundation for several stand-alone products that are instrumental for ocean climate monitoring. The primary product is the World Ocean Atlas (WOA) - a set of global climatological fields ofmajor essential ocean variables (EOV- temperature, salinity, etc., calculated at 102 standard depth levels at one- and quarter-degree spatial resolution grids. Maps and data files of WOA23 include the horizontal fields representing annual, seasonal, and monthly spatial distributions of analyzed data and statistics. These climatologies are calculated based on the entire data collection as well as on decadal sub-sets. The Ocean Heat (OHC) and Salt (OSC) Content anomalies, as well as Sea Level changes for monthly, seasonal, annual and pentadal periods are based on WOD derived data. These assessments are updated and published quarterly. For data-dense regions, the high-resolution regional climatologies on a one-tenth-degree grid are developed. WOD, WOA, OHC, and OSC assessments and hi-resolution regional climatologies are widely used for ocean climate monitoring and research studies such as the State of the Climate and Global Oceans reports, numerous publications, and atlases. All these data and data products are available for the ocean scientific community without restriction.

Publication Date

8-11-2025

Publication Title

OCEANS 2025 Brest

Publisher

IEEE

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Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1109/OCEANS58557.2025.11104766