NCEI Standard Product: World Ocean Database (WOD)

The World Ocean Database (WOD) is the world's largest publicly available uniform format quality controlled ocean profile dataset. Ocean profile data are sets of measurements of an ocean variable vs. depth at a single geographic location within a short (minutes to hours) temporal period in some portion of the water column from the surface to the bottom. To be considered a profile for the WOD, there must be more than a single depth/variable pair. Multiple profiles at the same location from the same set of instruments is an oceanographic cast. Ocean variables in the WOD include temperature, salinity, oxygen, nutrients, tracers, and biological variables such as plankton and chlorophyll. Quality control procedures are documented and performed on each cast and the results are included as flags on each measurement. The WOD contains the data on the originally measured depth levels (observed) and also interpolated to standard depth levels to present a more uniform set of iso-surfaces for oceanographic and climate work.

The source of the WOD is more than 20,000 separate archived datasets contributed by institutions, project, government agencies, and individual investigators from the United States and around the world. Each dataset is available in its original form in the National Centers for Environmental Information data archives. All datasets are converted to the same standard format, checked for duplication within the WOD, and assigned quality flags based on objective tests. Additional subjective flags are set upon calculation of ocean climatological mean fields which make up the World Ocean Atlas (WOA) series.

The WOD consists of periodic major releases and quarterly updates to those releases. Each major release is associated with a concurrent release of a WOA release, and contains final quality control flags used in the WOA, which includes manual as well as automated steps. Each quarterly update release includes additional historical and recent data and preliminary quality control. The latest major release was WOD 2023 (WOD23), which includes more than 18.8 million oceanographic casts, from the second voyage of Captain Cook (1772) to the modern Argo floats (end of 2022).

The WOD presents data in netCDF ragged array format following the Climate and Forecast (CF) conventions for ease of use mindful of space limitations.

世界海洋数据库（World Ocean Database, WOD）是全球规模最大的公开可用统一格式质控海洋剖面数据集。海洋剖面数据指在短时间（数分钟至数小时）内，于单个地理位置的水柱表层至底层范围内，针对某一海洋变量按深度梯度获取的一系列测量值。若要被纳入WOD，该剖面需包含至少一组以上的深度-变量配对数据。同一地点、同一套仪器获取的多组剖面则构成一个海洋观测站位（oceanographic cast）。WOD收录的海洋变量包括温度、盐度、溶解氧、营养盐、示踪剂，以及浮游生物、叶绿素等生物类变量。所有观测站位均经过标准化质控流程处理，质控结果以标记的形式附加至每一条测量数据中。WOD同时提供原始观测深度层级的原始数据，以及插值至标准深度层级的标准化数据，以便为海洋学与气候学研究提供统一的等深面数据集。

WOD的数据来源包括来自美国及全球各地的科研机构、项目组、政府部门与个人研究者贡献的2万余个独立归档数据集。每一份原始数据集均可在美国国家环境信息中心（National Centers for Environmental Information, NCEI）的数据归档库中获取其原始版本。所有原始数据均被统一转换为标准格式，同时在WOD内部进行去重处理，并基于客观测试标准赋予质量标记。此外，在计算构成世界海洋图集（World Ocean Atlas, WOA）系列的海洋气候平均场时，还会额外设置主观质量标记。

WOD采用定期发布重大版本，并每季度对该版本进行更新的迭代模式。每一次重大版本发布均同步配套推出对应的WOA版本，其中包含用于WOA制作的最终质控标记，该质控流程同时涵盖自动化与人工审核环节。每季度的更新版本则会补充新增的历史与近期观测数据，并提供初步质控结果。最新的重大版本为WOD 2023（WOD23），其收录了超过1880万条海洋观测站位数据，观测时间跨度从库克船长第二次远航（1772年）直至现代Argo浮标观测（2022年底）。

考虑到存储空间限制，WOD采用遵循气候与预报（Climate and Forecast, CF）规范的netCDF不规则数组格式存储数据，以提升易用性。

搜集汇总

背景与挑战

背景概述

世界海洋数据库(WOD)是全球最大的公开海洋剖面数据集，包含温度、盐度等多种海洋变量，数据来自全球20,000多个独立数据集并经过严格质量控制。该数据库定期更新，最新版本WOD23涵盖了从1772年到2022年的超过1880万次海洋观测记录。