NASA ATOMIC Project: Saildrone Ocean-Atmosphere Observations from Barbados

Atlantic waters offshore of Barbados were the site of a 45-day NASA and NOAA airborne and field campaign from 17 January to 2 March 2020. The ATOMIC project deployed three wind-powered saildrones equipped with instruments measuring atmospheric and oceanographic variables. The dataset comprises surface observation files at 1-minute resolution and Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) files at 5-minute resolution for the duration of the campaign.

Use Cases

• Modeling air-sea heat and momentum fluxes based on concurrent air temperature, sea surface temperature, wind speed, and barometric pressure measurements.
• Analyzing mesoscale ocean eddy dynamics based on ADCP current profiles and hull-mounted temperature logger data.
• Studying near-surface ocean biogeochemistry based on salinity, dissolved oxygen, and chlorophyll-a concentration observations.
• Validating satellite-derived ocean and atmospheric data using high-resolution, in-situ surface observations from autonomous vehicles.

Strengths

• Data collection occurred over a focused 45-day campaign with a specific scientific goal to understand ocean-atmosphere interaction over mesoscale eddies.
• Instruments provide multivariate observations including CTD, fluorometer, dissolved oxygen sensor, anemometer, barometer, and ADCP.
• Surface data has a high temporal resolution of 1 minute, and ADCP data is at 5-minute resolution.
• Data files are in netCDF format and compliant with CF/ACDD metadata conventions for interoperability.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and total dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale ML tasks.
• The geographic scope is limited to the Atlantic region offshore Barbados during a specific 45-day period.

Provenance

Source

NASA and NOAA jointly funded the campaign.

Collection Method

Data gathered via a fleet of instrumented, autonomous saildrones (unmanned surface vehicles).

Time Range

17 January to 2 March 2020.

Freshness

Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Geography

Atlantic waters offshore of Barbados.