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SEAWATER

The SeaWater library of EOS-80 seawater properties is obsolete; it has been superseded by the Gibbs SeaWater (GSW) Oceanographic Toolbox of the International Thermodynamic Equation Of Seawater - 2010, (TEOS-10). The official site for the thermodynamic properties of seawater is www.TEOS-10.org.

TEOS-10 is based on a Gibbs function formulation from which all thermodynamic properties of seawater (density, enthalpy, entropy sound speed, etc.) can be derived in a thermodynamically consistent manner. TEOS-10 has been endorsed by SCOR and IAPSO and has been adopted by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission at its 25th Assembly in June 2009 to replace EOS-80 as the official description of seawater and ice properties in marine science.

A significant change compared with past practice is that TEOS-10 uses Absolute Salinity SA (mass fraction of salt in seawater) as opposed to Practical Salinity SP (which is essentially a measure of the conductivity of seawater) to describe the salt content of seawater. Ocean salinities now have units of g/kg.

The GSW Oceanographic Toolbox has almost 100 functions, such as density, entropy, enthalpy, Conservative Temperature, buoyancy frequency, and various geostrophic streamfunctions.

Historical Releases of the now-obsolete SeaWater library.

The SeaWater Matlab library for calculating the EOS-80 properties of sea water was written by Phil Morgan and Lindsay Pender of CSIRO Marine Research (Lindsay.Pender@csiro.au).

The SeaWater library of EOS-80 seawater properties is obsolete; it has been superseded by the Gibbs SeaWater (GSW) Oceanographic Toolbox of the International Thermodynamic Equation Of Seawater - 2010, (TEOS-10). The official site for the thermodynamic properties of seawater is www.TEOS-10.org.

Disclaimer: This software has been provided "as is" without warranty of any kind (the file sw_copy.m has the conditions of use and licence).

Release 3.3.1 Update of release 3.3 - 19 December 2014

  • seawater_ver3_3.1.zip
  • seawater_ver3_3.1.tar

    • Release 3.3 - 22 September 2010

  • seawater_ver3_3.zip
  • seawater_ver3_3.tar

    • Release 3.2 - April 2006

  • seawater_ver3_2.zip
  • seawater_ver3_2.tar
    • Filipe Fernandes has developed a Python translation of the SEAWATER-3.2 MATLAB toolkit routines.
  • Python Module Translation (Filipe Fernandes January 2010)

    • Release 3.1 - 24 Nov 2005

  • seawater_ver3_1.zip
  • seawater_ver3_1.tar

    • Release 3.0 - 12 Dec 2003

  • seawater_ver3_0.zip
  • seawater_ver3_0.tar

    • Release 2.0.2 - 25 Jun 1999

  • seawater_ver2_0_2.zip
  • seawater_ver2_0_2.tar

    • Release 2.0.1 - 22 Apr 1998 (BETA TEST VERSION)

  • seawater_ver2_0_1.zip
  • seawater_ver2_0_1.tar

    • Release 1.2e - 21 Apr 1998

  • seawater_ver1_2e.zip
  • seawater_ver1_2e.tar

    • Release 1.2d - 15 Nov 1994

  • seawater_ver1_2d.zip
  • seawater_ver1_2d.tar

    • Revision History

    Release 3.3 - 20 Sep 2010 (For Matlab 5.x and higher)

  • Corrected bug in sw_cndr resulting from incorrect usage of T68 - the results produced from sw_cndr were still correct despite the bug. Increased precision of sw_cndr to 1 part in 10-10.

    • Release 3.2 - 16 Apr 2006 (For Matlab 5.x)

  • Corrected sign of potential vorticity in sw_bfrq.

    • Release 3.1 - 24 Nov 2005 (For Matlab 5.x)

  • Added sw_swvel to compute surface wave velocity.

    • Release 3.0 - 12 Dec 2003 (For Matlab 5.x)

  • Converted code so that temperature is now ITS-90 throughout.

    • Release 2.0.2 - 25 Jun 1999 (For Matlab 5.x)

  • Coding changes to enable functions to return the same shape vector as the input arguments. In previous releases, some functions returned column vectors for row vector input. Also some other tidying up.

    • Release 2.0.1 - 22 Apr 1998 (For Matlab 5.x) BETA test version.

    Following modifications were implemented in this version
  • sw_satAr.m - New routine. Solubility of Ar in seawater.
  • sw_satN2.m - New routine. Solubility of N2 in seawater.
  • sw_satO2.m - New routine. Solubility of O2 in seawater.
  • sw_test.m - Added regression tests for above routines.

    • Release 1.2e - 21 Apr 1998 (For Matlab 4.x)

    The following modifications were implemented in this version
  • sw_alpha.m - Fixed bug where temp used in calculations regardless of whether 'temp' or 'pmpt' was passed as keyword.
  • sw_info.m - Shorter version. Refer users to web pages https://www.marine.csiro.au
  • sw_ver.m - New routine. Returns version number of SEAWATER
  • sw_test.m - New Routine. Run a test on the SEAWATER routines and compare results with literature values

    • Release 1.2d - 15 Nov 1994

    The following modifications were implemented in this version
  • sw_bfrq.m - Now also returns potential vorticity. Thanks to Greg Johnson (gjohnson@pmel.noaa.gov)
  • sw_gvel.m - OMEGA=7.29e-5 changed to OMEGA=7.292e-5 to be consistent with sw_f.m
  • sw_alpha.m, sw_beta.m, sw_aonb.m - All these routines expect (SP,t,p) to be passed instead of (SP,ptmp,p) as in previous release. Fast execution can still be obtained by passing ptmp with a string flag 'ptmp' see help.

    • Release 1.2c - 19 Oct 1994

  • sw_new.m - New routine. Information on new release of library.
  • sw_bfrq.m - Fixed bug where LAT = [ ] was needed as argument when no latitude values are being passed. Now pass PRESSURE instead of DEPTH. This is more consistent though only a negligible change is results.
  • sw_info.m - Updated to include a registration section. Noted that software is FREE.

    • Release 1.2b - 12 Oct 1994

  • First official release and announcement on the internet.