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We have undertaken various aspects of CTD/hydrographic data assembly and data comparison for the WOCE Pacific Basin Experiment. Our first comparison was of WHP and historic deep temperature data in the far southeast Pacific, where we found in the Circumpolar Deep Water warmer temperatures in the WOCE data. The pattern of warming was consistent with a small (ca. 50 km) net southward shift in the position of the mid-depth fronts between the periods rather than a warming of the Circumpolar Deep Water. With the updated/expanded Levitus data we can now expand the scope of our comparisons. We are examining the WOCE-minus-Levitus temperature, salinity, oxygen, and nutrient fields for the meridional lines P14, P16, P17, and P19, and hope to have available for the meeting a compilation of the results. Many model-related studies refer to the Levitus data, yet in some regions the differences between the high-resolution single-pass WOCE lines and the statistically-reduced Levitus lines are striking. As one would expect, some of the most dramatic differences are found where there were few pre-WOCE data available. The WOCE Hydrographic Program is adding much to our ability to resolve oceanographic features on a global scale.
With regards to data assembly, among the more useful compilations are the data selected by Joe Reid and Arnold Mantyla to map global deep ocean characteristics. They have made these freely available as collections of profiles assembled on a basin basis, very useful for mapping. We have been reconstituting these basin data sets into the individual constituent vertical sections. Where Reid and Mantyla use a subset of the stations from an expedition we locate all the original cruise data but apply to these any overall calibration corrections made by Reid and Mantyla. Also we are trying to eliminate obvious errors (such missing/bad data mis-written as zeros) in the original NODC files. This recompilation is useful for section-oriented studies, and for section-oriented software such as OceanAtlas. These data will be available in NODC/SD2 format and in OceanAtlas format.
We are also trying to assemble various tracer data into WOCE format. Much of this has already been done by the WHP Office, and our work complements theirs. In addition to the obvious utility of gathering together multi-tracer data into a single format, there is the advantage that OceanAtlas now directly imports WOCE-format bottle data.
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