North Atlantic Ocean Temperature and Salinity Data, Gridded from Argo and RAPID, 2004-2022

2004 to 2022 of gridded oceanographic data from the North Atlantic Ocean, combining Argo profiling float and RAPID mooring measurements. The dataset provides in-situ temperature and practical salinity on a 1-degree by 1-degree grid with 10-day and 20-decibar resolution, created by the National Oceanography Centre for NERC projects. It is stored as a CF-compliant netCDF file.

Use Cases

• Modeling Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) based on the gridded temperature and salinity fields.
• Analyzing decadal-scale ocean climate variability based on the 18-year time series.
• Validating ocean general circulation models based on the objectively mapped data with uncertainty estimates.
• Studying water mass formation and mixing based on data mapped onto sigma-1 density surfaces.

Strengths

• Data spans 18 years from 2004 to 2022, providing a long-term climate record.
• Combines two authoritative data sources: Argo profiling floats and RAPID 26N moorings.
• Includes mapping uncertainties for both temperature and salinity parameters.
• Uses a defined objective mapping procedure with a 500 km decorrelation length scale.

Limitations

• No further quality control was applied after the source programs; quality relies on original flags.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanography Centre (NOC), created for NERC projects ACSIS and CLASS.

Collection Method

Objective mapping of quality-controlled Argo float and RAPID MicroCAT CTD data onto a regular grid.

Time Range

2004 to 2022

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-18 15:10:52.699404; freshness should be verified.

Geography

North Atlantic Ocean