The Saturation Chronicles - 10

Fig. 1 WOD once upon a time

The "Wayback Machine" recorded how the World Ocean Database was once organized (Fig. 1, link to the Wayback Machine).

You could click on a "zone square" to access data located only in that square.

It was quite handy.

I added the concept of latitude layers so as to offer a way of contemplating the data on a latitude basis (Fig. 2).

The reason I did that was the fact that isolating the actual in situ measurements of an "Ocean Area" required carving up zone measurements.

Notice that there aren't any lines showing the boundaries of the various oceans.

Fig. 2 WOD layers example

For example where exactly are the wiggly boundaries of the North and South Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans?

So even if that is determined the calculations of changes taking place in those areas is based on ragged edges (parts of lots of zones are in more that one ocean area).

But when the calculations are based on a layer of zones, those zones at the edges are precise.

That is how the WOD stores data, so there are no ragged edges to impose uncertainty as to which measurements are in which oceans at the wiggly ocean edges.

Instead, there is simply a list of complete zones to work with as shown in one of today's appendices (APPNDX TSC Zones).

Note that only zones with seawater in them (not over land), whether in whole or in part, and only zones with WOD in situ measurements of temperature, salinity, and depth are used this way.

Those ragged ocean edges really don't make a lot of difference after all of the billions of in situ measurements are produced and averaged, as shown in today's graphs, based on zones in layers (APPNDX TSC 1900, APPNDX TSC 1950).

Compare them with other graphs made from a number of ragged edge ocean areas (The Saturation Chronicles - 6, The Saturation Chronicles - 7 [19 ocean areas]) compared to 31 ocean areas (APPNDX Sat 1900, APPNDX Sat 1950).

At least we get a comprehensive and possibly complete picture with the layer/zone approach.

One difference in the layer calculations is that the final saturation value has been diminished by negative potential enthalpy values (ice layers or negative temperatures).

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The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.