This dataset contains a list of 7,339 global coastal ports, with monthly sea surface temperature and salinity data from 1955 to 2017. Monthly temperature and salinity data were sourced from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration World Ocean Atlas. This port dataset was sourced from Bailey et al. (2020).

The dataset is a compilation of two datasets: (i) a list of 8,392 global shipping ports with positional coordinates (latitude and longitude) (originally compiled by Keller et al, 2011 and updated by Bailey et al, 2020) and (ii) monthly sea surface temperature and salinity data downloaded from the World Ocean Atlas 2018 (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/world-ocean-atlas-2018/), available from the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) as the average of six decadal means from 1955 to 2017 following systematic data quality control techniques (Locarnini et al, 2019; Zweng et al, 2019). The environmental variable values were available at a one-degree grid resolution (i.e., points spaced at approximately 111 km) from January to December. The shipping port locations were matched with sea surface environmental variables based on closest geodesic distance. As the distance for some inland ports to the nearest environmental data point was greater than 2 grid cells (greater than 222 km), the analysis was restricted to coastal ports best represented by the data (all ports farther than 2 grid cells from the nearest environmental data point were excluded, e.g., Laurentian Great Lakes’ ports). Sea surface values were missing for 0.5%–3% of the 31,000-33,000 environmental data points. Since the percentage of missing values was relatively small, these points were dropped and the closest match procedure was rerun. 

• Bailey S. A., Bradie, J. N., Ogilvie D., & Mudroch, P. (2020) Global port environmental data used for environmental distance calculations. Dryad, Dataset https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.69p8cz906
• Keller, R. P., Drake, J. M., Drew, M. B., & Lodge, D. M. (2011). Linking environmental conditions and ship movements to estimate invasive species transport across the global shipping network. Diversity and Distributions, 17(1), 93-102. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1472-4642.2010.00696.x 
• Locarnini R, Mishonov A, Baranova O, et al (2019) World ocean atlas 2018, volume 1: Temperature. NOAA Atlas NESDIS 81 p 52
• Zweng M, Reagan J, Seidov D, et al (2019) World ocean atlas 2018, volume 2: Salinity. NOAA Atlas NESDIS 82 p 50

See the ReadMe file for details on the temperature and salinity data sources.