Global Ocean Sound Speed Profile Library (GOSSPL), an Rdata resource for studies of ocean sound propagation.

Ocean sound speeds are estimated from a database of global ocean model of temperature and salinity, and these sounds speeds are made available to users of the R programming language as an Rdata structure. Sound speeds are estimated with the Mackenzie approximation which estimates sound speed as a function of temperature, salinity and depth. Monthly average temperature and salinity data are taken from Version 3.0.1 of the Generalized Digital Environmental Model – Variable resolution (GDEM-V). Resulting sound speeds cover most seawater areas from 82°S to 90°N at a spatial scale of 0.25 degrees, a temporal scale of monthly averages, and a variable depth scale. The resulting Rdata structures are made publically available. R programming scripts for the creation of these structures and for reading from these structures are included in appendices.