NASA SASSIE Project: Arctic Ocean Salinity and Temperature Measurements, 2022

NASA's SASSIE project collected in situ and remote sensing observations in the Beaufort Sea during August-October 2022. The dataset contains temperature and salinity measurements from ALTO and ALAMO profiling floats, as well as ocean current data from a shipboard ADCP and wave/meteorological data from SWIFT drifters. Data are available in netCDF and MATLAB formats under a CC-BY-4.0 license.

Use Cases

• Modeling sea surface temperature (SST) changes based on salinity anomalies from melting sea ice.
• Analyzing ocean stratification and subsequent sea-ice growth patterns in the Beaufort Sea.
• Studying the Lagrangian movement and wave-following behavior of sensor platforms using SWIFT drifter data.
• Investigating vertical shear of ocean currents from shipboard Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) measurements.

Strengths

• Data originates from a focused NASA field campaign with intensive observations within ~200 km of the sea ice edge.
• Includes measurements from specialized instruments like ALTO floats with ice-avoidance firmware and ALAMO floats designed for freeze-up conditions.
• Covers the transition from summer melt to autumn ice advance during a specific period (August-October 2022).

Limitations

• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The survival and data return of some floats (ALTO) over the winter is noted as hopeful but not guaranteed.

Provenance

Source

NASA

Collection Method

Field campaign involving deployed profiling floats, drifters, and shipboard instruments.

Time Range

August-October 2022

Freshness

Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Geography

Beaufort Sea, within ~200 km of the sea ice edge