Seaglider Ocean Salinity Profiles from Adaptive Guam Deployment

Three autonomous Seagliders collected over 1,000 ocean profiles near Guam from October 2019 to January 2020. The University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory led this NASA-funded project to measure salinity and temperature responses to tropical rain events. Data is provided in netCDF format at Level 2 (gridded) and Level 3 (processed) for the upper 1000 meters.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the correlation between NEXRAD radar rainfall data and near-surface salinity changes recorded by the gliders.
• Modeling the three-dimensional patchiness of salinity fields using data from gliders spaced 1 to 60 km apart.
• Validating satellite-derived sea surface salinity products with in-situ temperature and salinity profiles from 0-1000m depth.
• Studying the temporal evolution of rain-induced freshwater lenses using profiles collected approximately every 3 hours.

Strengths

• Data collection employed an adaptive formation of three gliders, specifically designed to capture the spatial patchiness of rain events in real time.
• Profiles provide high vertical resolution data on regular depth bins from 0 to 1000 meters over a continuous 4-month observation period.
• Data is available in two processed levels: Level 2 for basic gridding and Level 3 for despiked and interpolated analysis.

Limitations

• Exact row count, file size, and specific column names are not provided by any source.
• Sources conflict on license information: one platform lists 'other-license-specified' while others list it as unknown or null.
• The most recent update date has a significant conflict, with one source showing 2026 (likely a metadata error) and others showing 2020.

Provenance

Source

Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, under NASA grant NNX17AK07G.

Collection Method

Autonomous Seaglider profilers measuring salinity and temperature, deployed in an adaptive formation.

Time Range

2019-10 to 2020-01

Freshness

2020-01-15 02:00:00

Geography

Ocean region near Guam (approximately 14°N 144°E).