The consistent in-situ global gridded temperature and salinity dataset, CORA OA 1960–2024

Abstract. Gridded ocean products play a pivotal role in oceanographic and climate research, providing a framework for the cross- validation and calibration of satellite observations and in-situ data. This paper describes the latest evolution of the global gridded ocean objective analysis fields for temperature and salinity, distributed by the Copernicus Marine Service. It accounts for the update of the objective analysis first guess using monthly fields derived from the temporal interpolation of World Ocean Atlas 2023 (WOA23) decadal temperature and salinity climatologies. The new product provides monthly objective analysis fields for temperature and salinity with a 0.5° horizontal resolution and 187 vertical levels covering depths from 0 to 5500 m. The time series spans from 1960 to December of the previous year. A full reprocessing is conducted every November, while an interim update covering the first six months of the current year is released each June. This product was compared with other reference 3D temperature and salinity datasets, as well as SST and SSS products. It exhibits strong consistency with all reference data, particularly over the 1985–2024 period. Notably, the product proved robust against the "Argo fast salty drift" frequently detected in other datasets after 2016. The gridded product is freely accessible on the Copernicus Marine data store (https://data.marine.copernicus.eu/) under the ID INSITU_GLO_PHY_TS_OA_MY_013_052.