Original Expendable Bathythermograph (XBT) data from the World Ocean Database WOD2005 (Boyer et al. 2006) downloaded via ftp from the NODC web-site (http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/search/prod) as of May 2009. The data include only XBT temperature profiles with the last observed level shallower than 900 m, which correspond to the T-4, T-6, T-7 and DeepBlue XBT probe types. The data has been quality controlled and interpolated on 1 meter levels using Reiniger and Ross (1968) method A correction method (Gouretski and Reseghetti, submitted) represent a key improvement over the original data which are known to be biased. Temperature and depth corrections were applied to the interpolated data to reduce systematic thermal and depth biases. Profiles with less than three interpolated non-dummy levels have been excluded. The data are organized in 169 files, each including profiles within a 1-degree latitude zonal belt between 90 N and 79 S.
The Version 1.0 provides a crude range quality flag only. The crude ranges are similar to those used by Boyer et al. (2006), ...
Description
The Version 1.0 provides a crude range quality flag only. The crude ranges are similar to those used by Boyer et al. (2006), but we increased the number of geographical regions and narrowed the respective temperature ranges in some cases. The corrections for temperature and sample depths are based on the study by Gouretski and Reseghetti, where XBT data were compared against the neighbor CTD and Bottle hydrographic data, representing high-quality reference data.