The North Atlantic and Nordic Seas hydrography collection

This report describes a collection of hydrographic (temperature and salinity) profiles and surface samples compiled in order to support several projects at the Nansen- and Bjerknes centres involving the North Atlantic and Nordic Seas. The region covered includes the subpolar North Atlantic Ocean (north of 47◦N; Newfoundland– Brest), the Nordic Seas, and the Barents Sea (i.e., to 83◦N and 70◦E). The time span is 1900–2015. The collection is named the North Atlantic and Nordic Seas hydrography collection (NANSHY). The relatively cold and fresh subpolar gyre and the northward flow of warm and saline waters characterize the region south of the Greenland–Scotland Ridge. In the southeastern part of the Nordic Seas warm and saline water from the North Atlantic flow northward while in the western part of the Nordic Seas cold and relatively fresh water flow southwards. The interaction of water masses and their mixing product is essential for the climate and living conditions in these areas. Rather than to deliver any kind of gridded product or extensively quality checked and user supported database, the collection merely provides the most useful single profiles and samples, compiled from several databases and sources. It is not intended to be the database for the region, neither wrt. quality nor public access. The treatment of data involves, however, checking for duplicates, elimination of gappy profiles, and other simple sifting methods. The work and motivation itself stems from the data collection done in the Project NISE (Norwegian Iceland Seas Experiment), but all downloads and code has been remade. The NISE-dataset is among the sources used.NERSC Technical Report no. 37