Antarctic Drifting Buoy Observations from 1995-1998

Antarctic Drifting Buoys data contains positional and environmental measurements from buoys along the ice edge in the Australian Antarctic sector. The archived subset covers the period from 1995 to 1998, involving observations from around 20 buoys managed by the Australian Antarctic Data Centre. This work was completed as part of ASAC projects 742 and 2678.

Use Cases

• Analyze sea ice movement and buoy Velocity in relation to Longitude and Latitude coordinates.
• Model relationships between Air Temperature, Water Temperature, and Air Pressure in polar regions.
• Assess positional data quality by filtering records based on the ARGOS Positional Accuracy field.
• Study the presence of sea ice using the Sea Ice Flag across different Years and Time stamps.
• Track the trajectory and deployment life of individual instruments using the Buoy Number over time.

Strengths

• Contains 11 distinct measured fields including position, temperature, pressure, and velocity.
• Data collection initiated in February 1985, providing a long-term context, with a specific archived subset from 1995-1998.
• Part of the International Program for Antarctic Buoys (IPAB), indicating standardized international data collection.

Limitations

• The archived data is temporally limited, covering only the 3-year period from 1995 to 1998.
• Observations are not continuous over the full time period or geographic area, with data from only around 20 buoys.
• Sample size and total row count are unknown, making it difficult to assess statistical power.

Provenance

Source

Australian Antarctic Data Centre (AU_AADC), part of the International Program for Antarctic Buoys (IPAB).

Collection Method

Measured by drifting buoys frozen into or deployed along the Antarctic ice edge.

Time Range

1995 to 1998 (archived subset). Full program ongoing since February 1985.

Freshness

Data is static; the last updated date for the archived subset is 1998-12-31.

Geography

Australian sector of Antarctica, Southern Ocean ice edge region.