ERA5 Climate Variables Interpolated to Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition Cruise Track

The austral summer of 2016/2017 provides the temporal coverage for this dataset. It contains ERA5 reanalysis fields interpolated onto the five-minute average cruise track of the Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition. The dataset was created by Michele Volpi of ETH Zurich and includes atmospheric, land, and oceanic climate variables.

Use Cases

• Validate climate reanalysis models based on in-situ ship-track observations mentioned in the description.
• Study atmosphere-ocean interactions in the Southern Ocean based on the interpolated meteorological and oceanic variables.
• Analyze spatial and temporal variability of climate parameters along a circumpolar Antarctic route.
• Compare interpolation methods ('nearest' vs. 'linear') for gridded data applied to moving platforms.

Strengths

• Data is derived from the authoritative ERA5 reanalysis produced by the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
• Provides two distinct interpolation methods ('nearest' and 'linear') for methodological comparison.
• Focuses on the unique and data-sparse region of the Southern Ocean during a specific expedition.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

ERA5 reanalysis from Copernicus Climate Change Service (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu).

Collection Method

Gridded ERA5 fields were downloaded and interpolated spatially and temporally to the ship's coordinates.

Time Range

Austral summer of 2016/2017.

Geography

Cruise track of the Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition around Antarctica.