37 
6. Caspian Sea Climatology 
A dataset obtained from the Institute of Geography, Baku, Azerbajdjan, allowed us for the 
first time to calculate a climatology for the Kaspian Sea, the Earth's largest interior sea. 
Climatological distributions of temperature and salinity were calculated on the same 0.5x0.5 
degree grid with the same vertical resolution as for the Global Ocean. Here we provide only 
two examples of property distributions at selected standard levels (Fig. 25). Bottom relief is 
provided by the Caspian Environment Program (2002). 
46 48 50 52 54 46 48 50 52 54 
-9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 27 12.0 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 12.6 12.7 12.8 13.0 
Fig. 25: Annual mean distribution of potential temperature and salinity at 10 meter 
depth in the Caspian Sea. 
7. Integral characteristics of the gridded dataset 
The annual gridded climatology was used to obtain some integral property characteristics of 
the World Ocean. Gridded properties were averaged with weighting accounting for the 
respective area and depth range as represented by each grid-node. Volume-averaged 
values were obtained for the Global Ocean and for the Polar, Atlantic, Indian, Pacific, and 
Southern oceans separately as shown in Fig. 26. Hudson Bay, Baltic Sea, Black Sea, 
Mediterranean Sea are included into the Atlantic domain, Red Sea and the Persian Gulf are 
included into the Indian Ocean domain, and seas of the Indonesian Archipelago belong to 
the Pacific domain. The latitude 30°S is assumed as the northern boundary of the Southern 
Ocean.