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We start on the Data Library Home Page. Since we know we are looking for Levitus data, we do a keyword search on 'levitus' by entering 'levitus' in the blank and pressing the 'submit' button.
The search results show a number of matches. We pick LEVITUS94 Ocean Climatology because it is the latest and greatest version.
We are now looking at the documentation for the dataset. The first sentence says "The data are here", and we follow that link.
We are now at the root of the LEVITUS94 tree. There are three useful choices:
| - | which is annually averaged data to the bottom, | |
| SEASONAL | - | which contains four seasonal averages to 1500m, and |
|---|---|---|
| MONTHLY | - | which contains twelve monthly averages to 1000m. |
We now have a choice of variables, of which we choose temperature. Having selected a single variable, the number of options (and information) greatly increases.
Since we do not want all the data, we now need to select the subset we need. The straightforward approach is to pick Data Selection which lets us choose a subset purely by clicking. We choose X, then 108.5E, 122.5E, and RANGE. We then do the same for Y, choosing 7.5N , 70.5N, and RANGE. Having restricted the dataset to just what we want, we then choose Stop Selecting.
We are now back to a page with the same options as before, except now we have restricted the dataset to be a subset of the LEVITUS dataset. It is a good idea (but not strictly necessary) to look at the data now by selecting the Data Viewer to make sure that we have the data we want.
Since we want a copy of the data as a file, we choose Data Files. We then pick the data file format of our choice.
Having selecting a subset by clicking through the options (here), we may decide that we made a mistake. We can then edit the text in the top window of the page, choosing for example a smaller Y range. We then click on OK to arrive at a different subset of the data. We then proceed as before. We also could have typed these commands in at any time: the expert short cut.
Datasets by Category is a set of short categorical discussions of some of the datasets, discussions that in turn point to the data. Currently they point to the older Levitus data sets.
Datasets by Source is a complete list of datasets by local dataset name. We can then select LEVITUS94 and proceed as before.
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