Global Climatology and Atlantic Ocean Atlas

The WOCE Global Hydrographic Climatology WGHC (published as BSH Report 35, 2004) provides a consistent and coherent hydrographic gridded full depth data set on 45 depth levels with a 0.5° spatial resolution. High quality hydrographic observations from the WOCE one time and repeat hydrographic cruises with ca. 9000 stations for the period 1990 - 1998 are the modern basis. The reference observed data set, comprising WOCE and high quality cruises occupied after 1970 (a total of 19867 profiles distributed over 384 cruises) is used to quality control a historical data set of older cruises occupied mostly before 1970 and profiles not included in the high quality subset (a total of 1 039 668 profiles distributed over ca. 42 000 cruises). For the WGHC climatology the original profile data have been isopycnically averaged using optimal interpolation. Seven parameters subjected to a strict quality control are given: temperature, potential temperature, salinity, oxygen, silicate, nitrate, phosphate.