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