SIO Upper Ocean Temperature climatology and Anomalies

The climatologies include temperature, heat storage, and mixed-layer depth, while the anomalies include monthly heat storage. They are served as datasets, including an interactive viewer and downloadable data files.

Mixed-layer depth is defined as SST - 1.0C.

Annual temperature profile observation counts
YEARCOUNT
195541,958NODC NGOTS
195645,978
195757,427
195867,380
195965,886
196068,758
196176,295
196282,125
196389,042
196483,430
196585,909
196693,860
196774,938
196874,305
196968,484
197059,781
197165,320
197260,205
197367,360
197471,294
197559,659
197660,606
197760,171
197861,217
197963,189
198063,715
198156,893
198254,920
198348,150
198450,863
198550,294
198649,072
198742,969
198826,260
198940,092GTSPP
199013,039
199121,790
199229,515
199354,248
199451,520

TEMPERATURE CLIMATOLOGY AND ANOMALY ANALYSIS PROCEDURE

  1. Temperature profile databases used:
    1. 1955 to 1988: NODC Global Ocean Temperature/Salinity CD-ROM data set.
    2. 1989 to 1994: Global Temperature/Salinity Pilot Project(GTSPP) data set.
  2. Interpolate temperature profiles at inflection points to 15 standard levels(0, 20, 40, 60, 80, 120, 160, 200, 240, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700 and 800 meters). Simple linear interpolation is used.

CLIMATOLOGY

  1. Calculate MONTHLY climatology at each standard level by BIN AVERAGING absolute temperature profiles to a 5 Deg.(X) -by- 2 Deg.(Y) grid res- olution. Only data from Jan. 1980 to Dec. 1989 was used. The MONTHLY mean was calculated for each month from 1980 to 1989. Each monthly mean is then summed over the 10 year period to form the RAW climatological mean for the month.
  2. A Fourier analysis is performed using the first 2 harmonics(the ANNUAL and BI-ANNUAL cycles) for each time sequence at each grid location for each standard depth. The Fourier series is
         y'(i) =  [An * COS (2*n*pi*t/12) + Bn * SIN (2*n*pi*t/12)]
              for n = 1 to  2 and
                  t = 0 to 11
    
    The Fourier coefficients A1/B1, A2/B2 and the long-term ANNUAL mean are written-out as grids at each standard level.
  3. Areas of missing data in the Fourier coefficient and long-term ANNUAL mean fields are filled by zonal and meridional linear interpolation. The following procedures are followed for the area filling,
    1. The maximum ZONAL no-data gap is 20 degrees.
    2. The maximum MERIDIONAL no-data gap is 10 degrees.
  4. New monthly climatology fields are constructed using the filled Fourier coefficients and long-term ANNUAL mean.

ANOMALIES

  1. Temperature anomaly profiles are calculated using the reconstructed monthly climatology. The climatology is BI-LINEARLY interpolated to the location of each temperature profile and the anomalies calculated at each standard level.

    Profiles of ABSOLUTE, ANOMALOUS and CLIMATOLOGICAL temperature are saved in MONTHLY files.

  2. Monthly Optimum Interpolation mapping of the temperature anomalies is performed for each standard level(0 ==> 400M) for each month from Jan. 1955 to Dec. 1994.

    Decorrelation scales used for th O.I. mapping:

          ZONAL(Lx)      = 10 degrees
          MERIDIONAL(Ly) =  5 degrees
          TEMPORAL(Lt)   = 90 days(from the 15th of each month).
    
  3. The O.I. mapped fields are filled in space and time. The spatial filling procedure is performed first with the following limits,
    1. The maximum ZONAL no-data gap is 20 degrees.
    2. The maximum MERIDIONAL no-data gap is 10 degrees.
    The temporal filling is done with Maximum Entropy Prediction based on the algorithm by N. Andersen, 'On the Calculation of Filter Coefficients for Maximum Entropy Spectral Analysis', 1974, Geophysics, Vol.39, No. 1, pp69-72.
  4. Adjust the space/time filled mapped monthly anomalies by computing the monthly MEANS of the ANOMALIES(over the period Jan. 1955 to Dec. 1994) then subtracting these means(of the anomalies) from the mapped fields.

Reference

The original dataset is kept here. The original dataset was produced by Ted Walker (walker@canopus.ucsd.edu).