Arctic Sea Ice and Phytoplankton Lidar Profiles from Twin Otter Aircraft

Arctic oceanographic lidar profiles from the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas were collected in July 2017. NOAA NCEI processed the data to quantify ice coverage and identify subsurface phytoplankton layers, analyzing their scattering strength, depth, and thickness. Power spectral density functions were also calculated for transects over Barrow Canyon to study turbulence.

Use Cases

• Analyzing phytoplankton layer depth and thickness to study subsurface algal blooms in Arctic waters.
• Calculating ice coverage percentages from lidar returns to assess sea ice conditions.
• Investigating turbulence levels within Barrow Canyon using power spectral density functions of backscatter data.
• Correlating phytoplankton layer scattering strength with background water properties.

Strengths

• Data provides specific geophysical measurements including layer depth, thickness, and scattering strength derived from lidar.
• Focuses on a targeted two-week time period in July 2017 for consistent seasonal analysis.
• Cross-platform presence on NASA EarthData and Data.gov signals its importance and curation.

Limitations

• Critical metadata conflicts exist: the last updated date is reported as both 2017-07-31 and 2026-04-01 across sources.
• No column names, row counts, or dataset size information are provided by any source.
• License and author information are not specified, limiting clarity on reuse permissions.

Provenance

Source

NOAA_NCEI

Collection Method

Data collected from an oceanographic profiling lidar flown on a Twin Otter aircraft (N57RF).

Time Range

2017-07-18 to 2017-07-31

Freshness

2026-04-01 15:14:18.517777

Geography

Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea, including Barrow Canyon.