Multi-decadal ocean temperature time-series and climatologies from Australia's long-term National Reference Stations

Moninya Roughan; Michael Hemming; Amandine Schaeffer; Tim Austin; Helen Beggs; Miaoju Chen; Ming Feng; Guillaume Galibert; Clive Holden; David Hughes; Tim Ingleton; Stuart Milburn; Ken Ridgway

doi:10.1038/s41597-022-01224-6

Multi-decadal ocean temperature time-series and climatologies from Australia's long-term National Reference Stations

Sci Data. 2022 Apr 7;9(1):157. doi: 10.1038/s41597-022-01224-6.

Authors

Moninya Roughan^#¹, Michael Hemming^#², Amandine Schaeffer^{2

3}, Tim Austin², Helen Beggs⁴, Miaoju Chen⁵, Ming Feng⁵, Guillaume Galibert⁶, Clive Holden⁷, David Hughes⁸, Tim Ingleton⁹, Stuart Milburn², Ken Ridgway⁸

Affiliations

¹ Coastal and Regional Oceanography Lab, Centre for Marine Science and Innovation, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia. mroughan@unsw.edu.au.
² Coastal and Regional Oceanography Lab, Centre for Marine Science and Innovation, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia.
³ School of Mathematics and Statistics, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia.
⁴ Science & Innovation Group, Bureau of Meteorology, Docklands, Vic, 3008, Australia.
⁵ CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Indian Ocean Marine Research Centre, Crawley, WA, 6009, Australia.
⁶ Australian Ocean Data Network, Integrated Marine Observing System, UTAS, Hobart, TAS, 7001, Australia.
⁷ Oceanographic Field Services, Freshwater, NSW, 2096, Australia.
⁸ CSIRO Marine Laboratory, Battery Point, TAS, 7004, Australia.
⁹ NSW Department of Planning Industry and Environment, Lidcombe, NSW, 2141, Australia.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Multi-decadal ocean time-series are fundamental baselines for assessing the impacts of environmental change, however, compiling and quality controlling historic data from multiple sources remains challenging. Here we aggregate, document, and release a number of long time-series temperature products and climatologies compiled from data obtained at 4 monitoring sites around Australia where sub-surface ocean temperature has been recorded nominally weekly to monthly since the 1940s/50s. In recent years, the sampling was augmented with data obtained from moored sensors, vertical profiles and satellite-derived data. The temperature data have been quality controlled, and combined using a rigorously tested methodology. We have packaged the multi-decadal, multi-depth, multi-platform temperature time-series at each site and produced a range of daily temperature climatologies from different data combinations and time periods. The 17 data products are provided as CF-compliant NetCDF files and will be updated periodically. The long-term temperature time-series will be useful for studies of ocean temperature variability, trends, anomalies and change. The data collection is supported by Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System and data are open-access.