Final Remarks#

This concludes the tour of basic Java OceanAtlas features. Where do you go from here?

  • If you have some training or experience in oceanography, you may have some ideas of the types of plots you would like to make and explore.

  • If you are taking an oceanography course your instructor may have assigned exercises which use Java OceanAtlas.

  • If you want to use Java OceanAtlas to explore the waters of the World Ocean, we recommend you use basin-spanning ocean sections, such as can be found in the “Best Vertical Section Data” in the JOA Suite. The WOCE Hydrographic Program, CLIVAR Repeat Hydrography, and GO-SHIP sections are the highest quality, nearly global ocean profile data set available at this writing.

  • Java OceanAtlas will directly read WOCE profile files in ‘WHP-Exchange’ format (_hy1.csv, _ct1.csv, and _ct1.zip) available from several sources, including cchdo.ucsd.edu. The section names are arcane, but the web sites contain maps that will orient you to the regions/sections you wish to explore.

  • Also, we have made Java OceanAtlas-compatible gridded (regularly-spaced in latitude and longitude) data files from the ‘World Ocean Atlas’ gridded and averaged data set compiled by S. Levitus and co-workers. These provide an interesting means of exploring ocean features on lateral (map-like), cross-section (ocean vertical section), and profile (single station) basis.

Java OceanAtlas has many more features than covered in the Guided Tour. If you intend to use Java OceanAtlas frequently we recommend you learn more about these. If you do not already have available the guide to OceanAtlas features, it can be found in the JOA application tab.

To become a Java OceanAtlas ‘power user’:

  • Learn to modify plots. Nearly every plot can be modified. Try ‘double clicking’ on a plot (or almost any part of a JOA data or plot window). This brings up a dialog box from which you can customize the plot.

  • Learn to edit and create Color/Contour bars. This is one of the great feature areas of Java OceanAtlas and not hard to use. Using your own customized color/contour bars with property-property plots, contour plots, profile plots, and even maps is a great way to get more out of the application and the data.

  • Learn to use the Filters. Station, observation, and data range filtering permit the user to focus on the data of greatest interest. Again this is not especially difficult.

  • Learn to export and import data and create custom data files. With Java OceanAtlas directly importing spreadsheet data and WOCE Exchange-format bottle data (_hy1.csv files) it is not difficult to get your data into Java OceanAtlas.

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