Boyer, Tim P.; Antonov, John I.; Baranova Olga K.; Coleman, C.; Garcia, Hernan E.; Grodsky, A.; Johnson, Daphne R.; Locarnini, Ricardo A.; Mishonov, Alexey. V.; O'Brien, Todd O.; Paver, Christopher R.; Reagan, James R.; Seidov, Dan; Smolyar, Igor V.; Zweng, Melissa M.(2016). NCEI Standard Product: World Ocean Database (WOD). NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. Dataset. [access date]"
Abstract
The World Ocean Database (WOD) is the world's largest publicly available collection of subsurface ocean profile data. It is a powerful tool for oceanographic, climatic, and environmental research, and the end result of more than 20 years of coordinated efforts to incorporate data from institutions, agencies, individual researchers, and data recovery initiatives into a single database. WOD data spans from Captain Cook's 1772 voyage to the contemporary Argo period, making it a valuable resource for long term and historical ocean climate analysis. Original versions of the 20,000+ datasets in the WOD are available through the NCEI archives.
The WOD is an NCEI product and an IODE (International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange) project.
This work is funded in partnership with the NOAA OAR Ocean Observing and Monitoring Division.
The WODselect retrieval system allows a user to search World Ocean Database and new (quartely updated/added) data using a user-specified search criteria. A distribution map and cast count of these search criteria will give the user the option to have the data extracted and placed on the NODC FTP site in the WOD native, 'csv', and netCDF data formats.