Sea Salinity GIS Layers for the Australian Region at Multiple Depths

CARS2000 provides seasonal maps of sea salinity and other oceanographic properties for the Australian region. The data is derived from the World Ocean Atlas 98 and CSIRO Marine and NIWA archives, interpolated to a 0.1-degree grid at depths of 0, 150, 500, 1000, and 2000 meters. It was designed to improve upon the Levitus WOA98 Atlas for the region spanning 100-200E and 50-0S.

Use Cases

• Modeling ocean circulation patterns based on salinity gradients.
• Studying seasonal salinity variations based on the annual and semi-annual sinusoid components.
• Creating baseline maps for marine habitat studies based on interpolated salinity fields.
• Validating regional ocean models based on the CARS2000 climatology.

Strengths

• Data is provided at five specific depth levels (0, 150, 500, 1000, 2000 meters).
• Covers a defined geographic region (100-200E, 50-0S) on a 0.1-degree grid.
• Incorporates data from authoritative sources including World Ocean Atlas 98 and CSIRO archives.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The loess filter and interpolation method may smooth out small-scale features.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network, derived from World Ocean Atlas 98, CSIRO Marine, and NIWA archives.

Collection Method

Loess mapping from ocean cast data, linearly interpolated to a 0.1-degree grid.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-04 07:10:05.671223; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Australian region (100-200E, 50-0S).