Skip to main content

Vertical Mean Salinity Anomaly: Basin Time Series

The time series of yearly, pentadal, and 3-month vertical mean salinity anomaly are presented for the 0-100, 0-700, and 0-2000 meters layers. There are one file of yearly and pentadal vertical mean salinity anomaly and four files of 3-month vertical mean salinity anomaly per each depth layer for each of four major oceanic basins: the World Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean (which includes the entire Arctic Ocean), and the Indian Ocean. Each file contains the integral for the entire basin (OB), the northern hemisphere part of the basin (NHPB), and the southern hemisphere part of the basin (SHPB). The WOA documentation includes information on downloading and reading the data.

Yearly (1955 - 2023)
Pentadal (1955 to 2023)
3-Month (1955 to present)
File naming conventions:

S-pss-[Y]0-[Z]m[X1-X2].dat where:

S-pss - the label for vertical mean salinity anomaly
Y - ocean basins: w - World, p - Pacific, a - Atlantic, i - Indian
0 - the upper depth of integration ('0' stands for the sea surface)
Z - the lower depth of integration ('700')
m - the label refering to depth in meters
X1-X2 - the 3-month period, where: '1-3' for Jan-Mar, '4-6' for Apr-Jun, '7-9' for Jul-Sep, '10-12' for Oct-Dec
dat - the filename extension

For example, file 'S-pss-w0-700m1-3.dat' contains the time series of ocean 3-month (Jan-Mar) vertical mean salinity anomaly of the 0-700 m layer for the World Ocean

Data format:
Data in each file is organized in column form. Each column corresponds to the time series for ocean basins as outlined below.

1st column - year+0.5 (for the yearly vertical mean salinity anomaly) or mid-point of five-year compositing period (for the pentadal vertical mean salinity anomaly);
2nd column - time series of vertical mean salinity anomaly of OB;
3rd column - time series of the standard error of vertical mean salinity anomaly of OB;
4th column - time series of vertical mean salinity anomaly of NHPB;
5th column - time series of the standard error of vertical mean salinity anomaly of NHPB;
6th column - time series of vertical mean salinity anomaly of SHPB;
7th column - time series of the standard error of vertical mean salinity anomaly of SHPB

The first line of file contains the labels for each of 7 columns. Read the second line through the last line using an equivalent of the FORTRAN FORMAT (F8.1, 6F8.3) statement.