Global climatological data of ocean thermohaline parameters derived from WOA18

Abstract

Abstract This is a global ocean climatological dataset of 17 thermohaline parameters such as isothermal layer (ITL) depth (h T ), mixed layer (ML) depth (h D ), thermocline gradient (G T ), pycnocline gradient (G D ) determined from temperature (T) and salinity (S) profiles of the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) world ocean atlas 2018 (WOA18) using the double gradient method along with the identity-index (i-index) showing the quality of the determination. With the identified (h T , h D ) and (G T , G D ), other parameters such as ITL heat content (H ITL ), mixed layer fresh-water content (F ML ), maximum thermocline gradient (G Tmax ), thermocline depth (h th ), temperature at thermocline depth (T th ), maximum density gradient G Dmax ), pycnocline depth (h pyc ), density at pycnocline depth (ρ pyc ), and (h T − h D ) (barrier layer if positive or compensated layer if negative). The dataset is located at the NOAA/NCEI website ( https://doi.org/10.25921/j3v2-jy50 ). It provides useful background information for ocean mixed layer dynamics, air-sea interaction, climatological studies. This paper is the only document for the dataset.