Global Ocean Heat Flux Climatology and Monthly Anomalies

Monthly global grids of ocean heat budget data, derived fluxes, and anomalies were prepared from the COADS dataset. The atlas provides a climatological baseline and monthly variations of heat exchange between the ocean and atmosphere. The dataset was produced by Oberhuber for SCIOPS and last updated in 1979.

Use Cases

• Analyze spatial patterns of monthly heat flux anomalies from the climatological mean.
• Validate modern climate model simulations of ocean-atmosphere heat exchange using the historical climatology grids.
• Study interannual variability in global ocean heat budgets using the derived flux time series.
• Correlate heat flux anomalies with known climate oscillation indices like ENSO using the monthly global grids.

Strengths

• Provides a global spatial grid for comprehensive geographical analysis.
• Includes both a long-term climatology and monthly anomaly data for temporal comparison.
• Derived from the established COADS (Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set) source.

Limitations

• Data is temporally stale, with the last update in 1979, missing recent decades of change.
• Specific row counts, column details, and resolution of the global grids are unknown.
• The underlying COADS data for this period has known sparsity in certain ocean regions.

Provenance

Source

COADS (Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set).

Collection Method

Derived fluxes and anomalies calculated from source observational data.

Time Range

Climatological period and monthly series specific to the COADS era (pre-1979).

Freshness

1979-12-31

Geography

Global ocean coverage.