Data types provided by OceanAnalysis

OA is the foundational base for all the OceanAnalysis data types. In each of those derived types, there are two elements: (1) metadata, which is a Dict holding information about the data (e.g. a sampling location, for a [Ctd] object), and (2) data, which may be DataFrame, a Matrix, or some other data-containing type.

The following outlines the available types and the principle functions relating to them. See the online documentation for graphical examples of many of these types.

• Adp holds data from Acoustic-Doppler Profile data, as read by read_adp_rdi and plotted with plot_adp.

• Amsr holds data from AMSR satellites. The metadata item is a Dict that holds information about the data source and sampling time. The data item is a matrix holding the requested field. See read_amsr for reading such files and plotting their contents.

• Argo holds data from Argo profiling floats, as read by read_argo.

• Ctd holds hydrographic data, either from plain CTD instruments or from Argo profilers. In each case, the metadata item holds information about the data (such as the position and time of sampling), and the data item is a DataFrame with columns named salinity, temperature and pressure, along (in some cases with other columns in the data file). The following functions return Ctd values: as_ctd, read_ctd_cnv, read_ctd_exchange, read_ctd_rsk and read_argo. Objects of type Ctd may be plotted with plot_profile and plot_TS.

• Coastline holds coastline shapes. The metadata item is a Dict that holds the name of the file from which the data were read (or an indication that the data were user-supplied directly). The data item is a DataFrame with columns named longitude and latitude. Note that the former is in the 0-360 degree range for the built-in datasets. See the documentation for coastline for reading and plotting such data.

• Echosounder holds data from scientific echosounders, as read with read_echosounder.

• Nonna holds high-resolution bathymetry data, as read with read_nonna.

• Section holds a collection of Ctd objects constructed from hydrographic profiles. Sections may be built up from such profiles with as_section or read_section. Archived sections may be downloaded with get_section. Plots of station locations can be created with plot_stations. Cross-section diagrams of the hydrographic data stored in sections (after they are gridded with grid_section) may be created with plot_section.

• Topography holds topographic information. The metadata item is a Dict holding items named "longitude" and "latitude". The data item is a matrix of earth height above mean sea level, in metres. Topographic files in NetCDF format may be accessed or downloaded with get_topography, and read with read_topography. Plots of Topography objects may created with plot_topography.