World Ocean Database 2013: Conductivity-Temperature-Depth Data (CTD)

World Ocean Database 2013 (WOD13) is a scientifically quality-controlled database of selected historical in-situ surface and subsurface oceanographic measurements produced by the Ocean Climate Laboratory (OCL) at the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC), Silver Spring, Maryland, USA. WOD13 updates and expands on an earlier version of the World Ocean Database 2005 (WOD05) product by including new data and implementation of the ISO 3166-1 country code standards in the cruise identifier. Data are both historical and modern with the most recent data from 2013. WOD13 was created to provide the full set of data and quality control procedures used to calculate climatologies of temperature, salinity, oxygen, phosphate, silicate, and nitrate to produce the World Ocean Atlas 2013 (WOA13). The WOD13 database includes oceanographic variables measured at “observed” depth levels as well as interpolated to a set of 33 “standard” depth levels.

The data are stored in 11 datasets (Ocean Station Data – OSD; High-resolution Conductivity-Temperature-Depth – CTD; Mechanical/Digital/Micro Bathythermograph – MBT; Expendable Bathythermograph – XBT; Surface – SUR; Autonomous Pinniped Bathythermograph – APB; Moored Buoy – MRB; Profiling Float – PFL; Drifting Buoy – DRB; Undulating Oceanographic Recorder – UOR; and Glider – GLD) each one representing a group of similar oceanographic probes.

APDRC only serves the geographically sorted OSD, CTD and XBT datasets at both the observed and standard depth levels. The WOD includes quality control flags that are set during automatic and subjective quality control steps in the calculation of WOA13 climatologies. There are quality control flags with each measurement and for each profile; and are provided here. The quality control flags for each depth of measurement are also served here. For the different quality flags (qf) please refer Table 12 in the WOD13 documentation at http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/WOD13/.

High-Resolution Conductivity-Temperature-Depth (CTD) Data

The CTD dataset contains data from Conductivity-Temperature-Depth instruments as well as STD data measured at high frequency vs. depth (pressure). CTD data are treated according to their resolution. All casts with a depth increment less than two meters are considered high-resolution CTD otherwise, the casts are considered as low-resolution CTD. The low-resolution CTD data reside within OSD dataset. High-resolution data collected by expendable Conductivity-Temperature-Depth (XCTD) instruments are also included in this dataset.

Variables
Temperature (degC)
Salinity (psu)
Oxygen (ml/l)
Chlorophyll (µg/l)
Transmissivity (1/m)
Pressure (decibar)
Zonal Station data
Meridional Station data
VerticalObserved and standard levels  
Temporal Historical to 2013
Static?yes
Volume 848,911 profiles
Serverpublic:
Sourcehttp://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/WOD13/
Acquired Sep 1, 2014
APDRC contact
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