Producing a Climate-Quality Database of Global Upper Ocean Profile Temperatures - The IQuOD (International Quality-controlled Ocean Database) Project.

Rebecca Cowley1, Matthew D Palmer2, Catia M Domingues3, Janet Sprintall4, Toru Suzuki5, Masayoshi Ishii6, Tim Boyer7, Gustavo Jorge Goni8, Viktor Vladimir Gouretski9, Alison M Macdonald10, Ann Thresher1, Simon A Good11 and Stephen C Diggs12, (1)CSIRO Ocean and Atmosphere Flagship, Hobart, Australia, (2)Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, United Kingdom, (3)Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-operative Research Centre, Hobart, Australia, (4)Federal University of Rio Grande, Instituto de Oceanografia, Rio Grande, Brazil, (5)Marine Information Research Center, Tokyo, Japan, (6)Japan Meteorological Agency, Tsukuba, Japan, (7)National Oceanographic Data Center, Silver Spring, MD, United States, (8)NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, Miami, FL, United States, (9)University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany, (10)Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, United States, (11)Met Office, Exeter, United Kingdom, (12)University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, United States
Abstract:
Historical ocean temperature profile observations provide a critical element for a host of ocean and climate research activities. These include providing initial conditions for seasonal-to-decadal prediction systems, evaluating past variations in sea level and Earth’s energy imbalance, ocean state estimation for studying variability and change, and climate model evaluation and development. The International Quality controlled Ocean Database (IQuOD) initiative represents a community effort to create the most globally complete temperature profile dataset, with (intelligent) metadata and assigned uncertainties. With an internationally coordinated effort organized by oceanographers, with data and ocean instrumentation expertise, and in close consultation with end users (e.g., climate modelers), the IQuOD initiative will assess and maximize the potential of an irreplaceable collection of ocean temperature observations (tens of millions of profiles collected at a cost of tens of billions of dollars, since 1772) to fulfil the demand for a climate-quality global database that can be used with greater confidence in a vast range of climate change related research and services of societal benefit.

Progress towards version 1 of the IQuOD database, ongoing and future work will be presented. More information on IQuOD is available at www.iquod.org.

Back to: Toward a Subsurface Ocean Climate Record and Applications that Improve Understanding of Climate Variability and Change I