NCEI regional ocean climatologies are ocean climate analyses derived from the World Ocean Database (WOD) that provide detailed insight into the state and long-term variability of climatologically, economically, and ecologically important regions that substantially contribute to earth and ocean climate change. To improve scientific foundation and reference for multi-disciplinary studies of these regions, NCEI develops high-resolution, quality-controlled, multidecadal RCs with annual, seasonal, and monthly means for temperature, salinity, and other variables found in the WOD.

Regional Ocean Climatologies are developed using objective analysis of irregularly distributed data to render smooth but realistic representations of WOD ocean variables on a regular grid. This technique can only be applied effectively in areas with enough data coverage to support a high (1/10° or better) horizontal resolution grid so that mesoscale activity (meandering of jet streams, eddies, large vortexes, and filaments) can be usably and accurately mapped. Using the Northwest Atlantic RC as a case study, the following papers by Seidov et al (2018, 2019) provide a detailed explanation of the scientific foundation, development process, and preliminary application methods for high-resolution RCs.