Over 960,000 ice draft measurements and 334 full-depth profiles of salinity and velocity were collected from a single mooring in the Beaufort Gyre. The Beaufort Gyre Exploration Project deployed Mooring B for 378 days from 2005 to 2006. Data collection was managed by the organization SCIOPS.
Use Cases
- Analyze temporal trends in ice_draft from upward looking sonar to study seasonal ice melt and growth cycles.
- Correlate profiles of salinity and temperature from the McLane Moored Profiler with concurrent horizontal_velocity measurements to assess water mass properties and currents.
- Use bottom pressure_recorder data to investigate barotropic tides and infer changes in sea surface height.
- Validate satellite-derived sea ice thickness estimates by comparing them with in-situ ice_draft measurements from the sonar.
- Study the vertical structure of the ocean using the profiler's pressure, temperature, and salinity columns to identify layers and mixing processes.
Strengths
- High-resolution time series with 962,840 samples from the upward looking sonar for detailed ice draft analysis.
- Includes 334 full-depth profiles from a moored profiler, capturing vertical structure of temperature, salinity, and velocity.
- Continuous deployment over 378 days provides data across multiple seasons in a critical Arctic region.
Limitations
- Data is from a single mooring location (Mooring B), limiting spatial representativeness.
- The dataset is temporally limited to a single year (2005-2006) and may not capture longer-term climatic trends.
- Sample data and specific column names are unavailable, complicating initial data exploration and schema understanding.
Provenance
- Source
- Beaufort Gyre Exploration Project, organization SCIOPS, accessed via NASA Earthdata.
- Collection Method
- In-situ measurements from a moored platform equipped with a bottom pressure recorder, a McLane Moored Profiler, and an upward looking sonar.
- Time Range
- 2005 to 2006 (378-day deployment).
- Freshness
- Data collection ended in 2006; the record was last updated in March 2007, representing a static historical snapshot.
- Geography
- Beaufort Gyre region in the Arctic Ocean (specific coordinates for Mooring B not provided).