Updated Ocean Database Available Online
Polar Science Center Hydrographic Climatology (PHC)
PHC 3.0 is available online at:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/Climatology.html
The Polar Science Center Hydrographic Climatology (PHC) has been
recently updated. PHC 3.0 is a smoothed, gridded 3-dimensional global
ocean database of annual, seasonal (winter and summer), and monthly
climatological mean temperature and salinity. It is the first GLOBAL
gridded database with a high-quality description of the arctic seas,
achieved by merging data from several sources, including Russian and
Canadian.
The update fixed two sources of small anomalies:
(1) Anomalies created by the background field used for optimal
interpolation in PHC 2.1 were eliminated. In the arctic, these errors
sometimes led to overly warm surface water (order 0.1 deg C or less
above the freezing point) which could affect ocean-ice heat fluxes.
(2) Other anomalies caused by differences in our input data sets near
the Arctic Ocean bottom were also eliminated. These errors sometimes
created isolated regions of static instability which, in a numerical
model, can lead to dynamic topography anomalies which generate
stationary eddies.
PHC 3.0 is available online at:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/Climatology.html
Funding for the development of PHC has been generously provided by the
Office of Naval Research, High Latitude Program, by NASA's Earth
Observing System, and by the National Science Foundation, Office of
Polar Programs.
Inquiries about PHC 3.0 may be sent to:
Michael Steele
Applied Physics Laboratory
1013 NE 40th St.
Seattle, WA 98105 USA
E-mail: mas [at] apl.washington.edu
Phone: 206-543-6586