Oceanographic Features - Climatology of Surface and Near-bed Temperature and Salinity on the North-West European Continental Shelf for 1971–2000

A 30-year (1971-2000) temperature and salinity climatology is presented for surface and near-bed regions of the NW European shelf seas, with a resolution of 1/6 longitude by 1/10 latitude. The data have been extracted from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) data centre and supplemented by additional records from the World Ocean Data Centre (WODC). From the original data, which are irregularly distributed in space and time, the mean monthly temperature and salinity are calculated, as well as the climatic mean annual cycle. The climatology presented here is an improvement upon all existing climatologies presented in the literature for the NW European shelf; covering a wider area on a finer scale and including the surface and near-bed distribution of both temperature and salinity. Comparison of our data with existing climatologies shows good agreement, with differences occurring where our climatology is an improvement. This climatology, which will prove to be valuable to many users in the marine community will be regularly updated and made available to all users via the ICES data centre.

Date (): 2009-10-30T00:00:00

Identifier: Marine_Scotland_FishDAC_1900

Scottish Government

Marine Directorate

Mailpoint 11, Area 1B South, Victoria Quay

Edinburgh

EH6 6QQ

United Kingdom

+44 (0)1224 876 544

Scottish Government

Marine Directorate

Mailpoint 11, Area 1B South, Victoria Quay

Edinburgh

EH6 6QQ

United Kingdom

+44 (0)1224 876 544

Scottish Government

Marine Directorate

Mailpoint 11, Area 1B South, Victoria Quay

Edinburgh

EH6 6QQ

United Kingdom

+44 (0)1224 876 544

Maintenance and update frequency

Keywords

Marine Environmental Data and Information Network

SeaDatanet Parameter Disciplines

Physical oceanography

SeaDataNet Agreed Parameter Groups

Water column temperature and salinity

BODC Parameter Discovery Vocabulary

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0 ()

Oceanographic geographical features

Use constraints: Open Government Licence

Use constraints: The following attribution statement must be used: Contains information from Scottish Government (Marine Scotland) licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Access constraints

Other constraints: no limitations to public access

Distance: 1000 m

Metadata language: (en)

Topic category

Oceans

Geographic identifier

The entire body of water between the bed and the atmosphere.

Date (): 2010-01-01

Supplemental Information: Berx, B., Hughes, S. 2009. Climatology of surface and near-bed temperature and salinity on the north-west European continental shelf for 1971–2000. Continental Shelf Research 29(19): 2286-2292. doi: 10.1016/j.csr.2009.09.006

Reference system identifier: EPSG
/
WGS84

Distribution format

ZIP
(
n/a
)

OnLine resource: DOI:https://dx.doi.org/10.7489/1900-1

OnLine resource: Delimited - 64 files with monthly and annual means and other parameters for temperature and salinity, near seabead and near surface. - ASCII Text files (space delimited)

OnLine resource: Image - 4 High resolution images of nearbed and surface salinity, nearbed and surface temperature respectively. - EPS

OnLine resource: Text - Report/Pre-print of methods, analysis and results - PDF

OnLine resource: Delimited - 10056 records of annual climatology values by lat, long, amplitude, mean, maximum phase, and phase - CSV/Data API

OnLine resource: Delimited - 120784 records of monthly mean values for temperature and salinty at surface and near seabed - CSV/Data API

OnLine resource: oceanographic_features_salinity_nearbed_nw_europe (
OGC:WMS-1.1.1-http-get-map
)

OnLine resource: oceanographic_features_salinity_surface_nw_europe (
OGC:WMS-1.1.1-http-get-map
)

OnLine resource: oceanographic_features_temperature_nearbed_nw_europe (
OGC:WMS-1.1.1-http-get-map
)

OnLine resource: oceanographic_features_temperature_surface_nw_europe (
OGC:WMS-1.1.1-http-get-map
)

OnLine resource: oceanographic_features_temperature_nearbed_nw_europe (
OGC:WFS
)

OnLine resource: oceanographic_features_temperature_surface_nw_europe (
OGC:WFS
)

OnLine resource: oceanographic_features_salinity_nearbed_nw_europe (
OGC:WFS
)

OnLine resource: oceanographic_features_salinity_surface_nw_europe (
OGC:WFS
)

Scope

Statement: This ZIP archive contains the ICES/WODC temperature and salinity climatology

for the 1971-2000 period on the NW European Shelf. Files are in ASCII format.

Details of the analysis can be found in the accompanying publication (berx-hughes_2009.pdf),

accepted in Continental Shelf Research.

There are also 4 directories containing the data. These are:

- nearbed_salinity

- nearbed_temperature

- surface_salinity

- surface_temperature

Temperatures are degrees Celsius, Values for land squares and areas beyond the continental shelf are set to NaN.

Each directory contains 16 files. All have the same structure (171 rows and 151 columns):

The first row contains the longitude of the grid, and the first column the latitude.

All columns to the right and below contain the variable for the longitude-latitude

coordinates specified. Variables are stored in the files as follows:

- ann_amp_????.txt : the amplitude of the annual cycle

- ann_avg_????.txt : the annual mean

- ann_phi_????.txt : the phase of the annual cycle

- ann_max_????.txt : the phase of the annual cycle, expressed as month of maximum.

- mon_jan_????.txt : monthly mean value for January

- mon_feb_????.txt : monthly mean value for February

- mon_mar_????.txt : monthly mean value for March

- mon_apr_????.txt : monthly mean value for April

- mon_may_????.txt : monthly mean value for May

- mon_jun_????.txt : monthly mean value for June

- mon_jul_????.txt : monthly mean value for July

- mon_aug_????.txt : monthly mean value for August

- mon_sep_????.txt : monthly mean value for September

- mon_oct_????.txt : monthly mean value for October

- mon_nov_????.txt : monthly mean value for November

- mon_dec_????.txt : monthly mean value for December

where ????, is the variable (tempB,tempS,saltB,saltS)

To reconstitute the annual cycle, the following formula can be used:

predicted = a + h sin(wt + phi)

where a = annual mean (from ann_avg_????.txt)

h = amplitude of annual cycle (from ann_amp_????.txt)

w = period of annual cycle = 2*pi/12

t = time to be predicted (in decimal months)

phi = phase of annual cycle

Ref: Berx, B., and Hughes S.L. 2009. Climatology of Surface and Near-bed Temperature and Salinity on the North-West European Continental Shelf for 1971–2000. Continental Shelf Research 29(19): 2286-2292 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.csr.2009.09.006

Metadata

File identifier: Marine_Scotland_FishDAC_1900

Metadata language: (en)

Resource Type

Date stamp: 2023-09-12T16:12:20

Metadata standard name: MEDIN Discovery Metadata

Metadata standard version: Version 2.3.7

Scottish Government

Marine Directorate

+44 (0)300 244 4000

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