An Updated World Ocean Database

WOD18 Approaches

I have now downloaded all of the latest update (end of September) of the World Ocean Database (WOD13), and am now "coming up for air."

Preparing it for use will take a day or so, but then I will post about it.

The more important news is that the World Ocean Database is going to be updated even more (WOD18).

From what I can tell, for several reasons it will be even better than the recent September update.

The main reason that this comping update interests me is that the well-known CSV file format is being implemented.

For those of us who had to write software programs to decipher the native WOD format and convert it to CSV format, it is a most welcome accomplishment.

Here are some links so readers can familiarize themselves with what is on the way:

WOD 18 prelim notes
main page
data
download info
publications
masks
pre-release doc PDF

Some of that may change because some of it is pre-release.

Anyway, in case you want to grab the latest legacy data, the latest download containing additions and corrections to the legacy WOD data (WOD13) increased the size of the download.

I plan to do some upcoming posts comparing the September update with the legacy data.

Stay tuned.

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