World ocean atlas 2013. Volume 1, Temperature

The oceanographic analyses described by this atlas series expand on earlier works, e.g., the World Ocean Atlas 2009 (WOA09), World Ocean Atlas 2005 (WOA05), World Ocean Atlas 2001 (WOA01), World Ocean Atlas 1998 (WOA98), World Ocean Atlas 1994 (WOA94) and Climatological Atlas of the World Ocean (Levitus, 1982). Previously published oceanographic objective analyses have proven to be of great utility to the oceanographic, climate research, geophysical, and operational environmental forecasting communities. Such analyses are used as boundary and/or initial conditions in numerical ocean circulation models and atmosphere-ocean models, for verification of numerical simulations of the ocean, as a form of 'sea truth' for satellite measurements such as altimetric observations of sea surface height, for computation of nutrient fluxes by Ekman transport, and for planning oceanographic expeditions among others. WOA13 includes analyses on both one-degree and quarter-degree grids. We continue preparing climatological analyses on a one-degree grid. This is because higher resolution analyses are not justified for all the variables we are working with and we wish to produce a set of analyses for which all variables have been analyzed in the same manner. High-resolution analyses as typified by the work of Boyer et al. (2005) will be published separately. We now generate and make available what we term 'Extended Vertical Resolution' (EVR) analyses. Analyses are now produced at 102 depth levels between the surface and 5500 m depth in contrast to 33 depth levels that we have produced in the past. This is made possible by the increased amount of high-resolution data available. Ocean data and analyses of such data at higher vertical resolution than previously available are needed to document the variability of the ocean, including improving diagnostics, understanding, and modeling of the physics of the ocean.