Categorized | Environment

Celebrating 50 years of ocean data

(Photo courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

MEDIA RELEASE

On Nov. 1, 1960, the National Oceanographic Data Center was established by the U.S. Navy, later (in 1970) becoming NOAA’s official center for analysis and archive of oceanographic data.

NODC hosts more than 44 terabytes of data from a variety of satellite, buoys, ships, and other observations that is freely available to the public.

One such dataset, the World Ocean Atlas , provides a gridded analysis of several oceanographic variables, such as temperature, salinity, and dissolved gases.

This image is a rendering of the average annual global salinity at the ocean’s surface. This climatology is created by averaging the global ocean salinity over five decades to create a long-term average.

Notice how in-land areas have much lower salinity than areas in the middle of the ocean basins, due to freshwater inputs from rivers.

On average, the ocean contains around 35 parts of salt per 1,000 parts of water (or 35 grams of salt per 1 liter of water). These values change with temperature, depth, and proximity to land.

— Find out more:
The National Oceanographic Data Center: www.nodc.noaa.gov

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