Alexey Mishonov is first author on the World Ocean Database 2023 (WOD23), the world’s most complete and representative digital collection to date of near real time and delayed mode oceanographic in situ profile measurements collected from ocean observing systems over the 1772 to 2022 instrumental record. Today, a paper highlighting the database was published in Scientific Data.
WOD23 is a collection of irreplaceable data records containing ~18.6 million water column profiles with ~3.6 billion measurements of 27 commonly measured physical and chemical variables, including 17 essential ocean and 11 climate variables, ~22.7 million meteorological and sea state observations, and more than 245 thousand plankton tows.
WOD23 serves as a foundational and reliable data resource by and for global marine communities by making globally scattered and heterogeneous data FAIR, uniformly formatted, quality controlled, and searchable by means of extensive granular metadata. The data were sourced from long-term archived primary data, thus preserving its provenance, traceability, and authoritativeness. New and updated data are made available as quarterly updates to WOD23.
WOD23 is now available to the public via the NOAA website. The paper is accessible through Scientific Data.
