Polar science center Hydrographic Climatology (PHC) ocean database
(version 2.1) Available
Data and information are available at:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/Climatology.html
General inquiries should be sent to Michael Steele, project director:
mas [at] apl.washington.edu.
WHAT IS PHC? PHC stands for the Polar science center Hydrographic
Climatology, a database created at the Polar Science Center, Applied
Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, in Seattle, Washington. It
is a smoothed, gridded 3-dimensional global ocean database of annual,
seasonal (winter & 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.
PHC was created using optimal interpolation, with the following input fields:
- Gridded fields from the global World Ocean Atlas (WOA, sometimes
referred to as "the Levitus database"), 1998 version, published by the
National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC).
- Gridded fields from the arctic regional Arctic Ocean Atlas (AOA), both
winter and summer versions, published by the Environmental Working Group
(EWG) and available from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).
- Original profile data from the Ocean Database available from the
Bedford Institute of Oceanography (BIO), Canada.
The data are available in the same format as the WOA'98 data, i.e.,
ASCII, 1x1 degree lat/lon, 33 depth levels.
WHO CAN USE PHC2.1? Anyone, but it may be especially useful for
numerical modelers who need smoothed, gridded fields for initialization,
validation, and climate restoring.
WHERE IS PHC2.1? Our web site is:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/Climatology.html
On this web site, you will find:
- A brief summary of PHC2.1
- A more detailed explanation of how PHC2.1 was created, and how it
differs from previous versions.
- Sample graphics
- Links to the input data, i.e., to WOA, AOA, and BIO.
- Data download page
Funding for the development of PHC has been generously provided by the
Office of Naval Research, High Latitude Program, by the NASA's Earth
Observing System, and by the National Science Foundation, Office of
Polar Programs.
Inquiries about PHC2.1 may be sent to:
Michael Steele
mas [at] apl.washington.edu
(206) 543-6586
Applied Physics Laboratory
1013 NE 40th St.
Seattle, WA 98105 USA