Global Ocean Thermocline Parameters from WOD Profiles 1960-2017

Thermal parameters for the upper ocean derived from over 1.2 million temperature profiles. The dataset contains 1,202,061 parameter sets calculated from World Ocean Database CTD and XBT profiles using the exponential leap-forward gradient method. It was produced by NOAA NCEI and covers the period from 1960 to 2017.

Use Cases

• Analyze long-term trends in isothermal layer depth and thermocline gradient to study ocean warming patterns.
• Use the Q-index and I-index to filter or weight profiles based on analysis quality for climate studies.
• Correlate sea surface temperature with isothermal layer heat content per unit mass to investigate air-sea interaction.
• Compare thermal parameter distributions between the 446,811 CTD-derived and 755,086 XBT-derived profiles to assess sensor biases.

Strengths

• Large volume of 1,202,061 analyzed temperature profiles.
• Long temporal coverage spanning 57 years from 1960 to 2017.
• Includes quality indices (Q-index, I-index) for each profile to assess analysis reliability.

Limitations

• Data is static with no updates after 2017, missing recent ocean warming trends.
• Potential for spatial and temporal sampling biases inherent in the original WOD ship-based profile collection.

Provenance

Source

World Ocean Database CTD and XBT temperature profiles, processed by NOAA NCEI.

Collection Method

Parameters calculated per profile using the exponential leap-forward gradient method published in Chu and Fan, 2017.

Time Range

1960-01-01 to 2017-12-31

Freshness

Static dataset, last updated 2017-12-31.

Geography

Global ocean coverage.