The climatology provides temperature and salinity data at 1X1 degree intervals for all the earth's oceans, down to a depth of 5500m, at incremental depths identical to those provided in the National Oceanographic Data Center's (NODC) World Ocean Atlas (WOA). This global climatology is the combination of NODC's 1998 world climatology (WOA), the Environmental Working Group (EWG) Arctic Ocean Atlas (AOA), and select Canadian data provided by the Bedford Institute of Oceanography (BIO). While the NODC data includes the Arctic ocean, the AOA data provides a better description of this region. Neither of these data fields provides a good representation of the Canadian Archipelago region and nearby bays in the winter months. The data from the Bedford Institute of Oceanography allowed us to bridge this data hole. These three data sets were merged using an optimal interpolation routine such that our PHC retains the high quality world description provided by the WOA while improving the Arctic with the AOA fields and Canadian data.

In summary, Polar Science Center Hydrographic Climatology (PHC) = WOA (Levitus) '98 everywhere except in our arctic domain, where we have blended in the AOA field (from EWG), and the BIO data to produce a more realistic arctic region.