Saildrone Arctic 2019: Ocean and Atmospheric Observations from Uncrewed Vehicles
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Description
The Saildrone Arctic 2019 dataset from the NASA NOPP_MISST Project provides high-quality, near real-time surface ocean and atmospheric observations. Six wind and solar-powered Saildrone uncrewed surface vehicles collected data during a 150-day cruise in the Bering and Chukchi Seas from May to October 2019. The mission aimed to improve modeling of diurnal warming and sea-surface temperature algorithms, measuring parameters like air temperature, wind, seawater temperature, salinity, chlorophyll fluorescence, and currents.
Use Cases
Validate satellite sea-surface temperature measurements in the Arctic based on in-situ skin and bulk temperature data.
Model diurnal warming and air-sea heat fluxes in marginal ice zones based on high-resolution atmospheric and oceanographic observations.
Study near-surface ocean currents and thermal structure based on acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) and vertical temperature logger data.
Analyze chlorophyll-a concentrations and dissolved oxygen levels for biological oceanography studies in Arctic waters.
Strengths
Data was collected at high temporal resolution, with key surface parameters recorded at 1-minute intervals.
The campaign involved six vehicles deployed for 150 days, providing multi-platform spatial coverage.
Includes depth-resolved current vector data binned at 5-minute resolution and measured at 2-meter intervals to 100m.
Funded and operated by authoritative institutions (NOAA and NASA) as part of the NOPP_MISST Project.
Limitations
Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for specific modeling tasks.
Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.
Provenance
Source
NASA National Ocean Partnership Program (NOPP) Multi-sensor Improved Sea-Surface Temperature (MISST) project, with joint funding from NOAA.
Collection Method
Deployment of six autonomous Saildrone uncrewed surface vehicles equipped with instrument suites for atmospheric and oceanographic sensing.
Time Range
14 May 2019 to 11 October 2019
Freshness
Data covers a specific campaign from May to October 2019; update frequency for the dataset is unknown.
Geography
Bering and Chukchi Seas, Alaskan arctic waters, including transects approaching the sea ice edge.
Data is provided in netCDF format files hosted on S3, which may require specific libraries for access and analysis.