Contents

1.  Introduction
2.  Data  basis
2.1  World  Ocean  Database  1998  (WOD98)
2.2  WOCE  data
2.3  Other  data
2.4  Subdivision  into  reference  and  historical  data
2.5  Time  and  spatial  distribution  of  the  data
3.  Data  Quality  Control
3.1  Cruise  identification
3.2  Random  errors
3.3  Systematic  errors
3.4  Calculation  of  inter-cruise  offsets
3.5  Calculation  of  biases  for  the  reference  cruises
3.6  Calculation  of  biases  for  historical  cruises
4.  Interpolation  onto  a  regular  grid
4.1  Optimal  interpolation  method
4.2  Data  reduction
4.3  Modelling  spatial  lag  correlation
4.4  Computational  details
5.  Comparison  with  WOA01  climatology
5.1  Difference  in  water  mass  characteristics
5.2  Comparison  of  derived  quantities
5.3  Static  stability  of  the  gridded  data
6.  Caspian  Sea  climatology
7.  Integral  characteristics  of  the  gridded  dataset
8.  Error  estimates  for  the  observed  and  gridded  data
8.1.  Observed  data
8.2.  Gridded  data
9.  CD-ROM  contents
9.1  CD-ROM-1:  Observed  data
9.2  CD-ROM-2:  Gridded  data
Acknowledgements
References

Appendix