GOANA, a Global Ocean Atlas, Neutrally Averaged

Paul M Barker, University of New South Wales, School of Mathematics and Statistics, Sydney, NSW, Australia and Trevor J McDougall, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Abstract:
Isopycnally averaged hydrographic data gives results that are significantly different to the standard method of averaging at constant depth. The act of averaging isopycnally ensures that water masses are neither created or destroyed. We average using the weighted least squares quadratic (or LOESS) fitting method of Chelton and Schlax (1994)
and Ridgway et al. (2002) along appropriately defined density surfaces. This produces an gridded oceanographic atlas that is composed of the Fourier coefficients of the mean temporal trend, the strength of the semi-annual and seasonal cycle allowing the user to reconstruct a climatology at any temporal resolution.