Northeast Pacific Regional Climatology (NCEI Accession 0163799)

The Northeast Pacific (NEP) new regional climatology is derived from the NCEI World Ocean Database archive of temperature and salinity and covers a time period from 1955 to 2012, or roughly six decades.

The NEP is an important region in the North Pacific Ocean. The NEP is home to the California Current System (CCS) and contains a large coastal upwelling zone along the west coast of North America. The CCS is one of the most productive ecosystems in the World Ocean, and its multidecadal variability is also important for long-term Earth and ocean climate change studies. Due to the economic significance and climatic importance of the CCS, intensive observational and research programs took place over many decades and yielded rich oceanographic data arrays of the CCS and adjacent NEP regions.

To provide an improved oceanographic foundation and reference for multi-disciplinary studies of the CCS and NEP, the NCEI Regional Climatology Team developed a new set of high-resolution, quality-controlled, and long-term annual, seasonal and monthly mean temperature and salinity fields at standard depth levels.