Description: Seasonal salinity climatology of the Northeast Pacific Ocean were computed from historical observations including all available conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD), bottle, expendable bathy-thermograph (XBT), and Argo data in NOAA (http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/), Marine Environmental Data Service (MEDS), and Institute of Ocean Sciences archives over 1980 to 2010 period. Methods: Calculations, including smooth and interpolation, were carried out in sixty-five subregions and up to fifty-two vertical levels from surface to 5000m. Seasonal averages were computed as the median of yearly seasonal values. Spring months were defined as April to June, summer months were defined as July to September, fall months were defined as October to December, and winter months were defined as January to March. The data available here contain raster layers of seasonal salinity climatology for the Canadian Pacific Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), a subset of seasonal climatology of the Northeast Pacific Ocean, with high spatial resolution of 1/300 degree. References: Foreman, M. G. G., W. R. Crawford, J. Y. Cherniawsky, and J. Galbraith (2008). Dynamic ocean topography for the northeast Pacific and its continental margins, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L22606, doi: 10.1029/2008GL035152. Data Sources: NOAA, MEDS and IOS observational data Uncertainties: Uncertainties are introduced when quality controlled observational data are spatially interpolated to varying distances from the observation point. Climatological averages are calculated from these interpolated values.

Zooplankton samples were collected at Ocean Station "P" (50.0000, -145.0000) from 1956 to 1980, and were analyzed to various levels of taxonomic resolution over the years. Although summaries of these data have been previously published ((LeBrasseur 1965) and (Fulton 1978, 1983)) the detailed species data have never been published. This detailed dataset contains total zooplankton wet weights/m3 for the whole period of 1956 to 1980, as well as densities (numbers/m3) for five major taxa (copepods, chaetognaths, euphausiids, amphipods, and Aglantha) from 1964 to 1967, species identifications, counts and lengths for many samples collected between 1968 to 1980. The attached supporting document (Ocean Station "Papa" detailed zooplankton data: 1956 – 1980) contains information on the methods used to collect and process the data along with descriptions of a number of fairly minor points about the data that were not resolved. It also describes, in detail, the format of the original data files, the corrections/changes that were made to these files in creating this version, and how these errors affect what was published in Fulton (1983). The purpose of this record is to make the detailed data available to the scientific community in an electronic format and to provide a convenient reference for citing the detailed data. Waddell, Brenda J., and Skip McKinnell. 1995. Ocean Station "Papa" detailed zooplankton data: 1956 - 1980. Can. Tech. Rep. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 2056: 21 p.