Near-realtime oceanographic profile data collected aboard the NOAA Ship Gordon Gunter from April 22 to May 30, 2010. The dataset contains vertical profiles of temperature and salinity from CTD and XBT instruments, gathered in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill event as part of the Global Temperature and Salinity Profile Programme (GTSPP). Data was provided by NOAA NCEI.
Use Cases
- Analyze vertical temperature and salinity profiles to model water column stratification changes post-spill.
- Map the spatial distribution of oceanographic conditions in the Gulf of Mexico during the spill event using georeferenced profile locations.
- Assess near-realtime data assimilation performance by comparing GTSPP-reported temperature and salinity with model forecasts.
- Investigate potential correlations between oceanographic features from CTD/XBT casts and surface oil dispersion patterns.
Strengths
- Data covers a critical 39-day period immediately following the Deepwater Horizon incident.
- Profiles are available in multiple standard formats (CSV, NetCDF, GTSPP ASCII) for broad accessibility.
- Includes ancillary files like an inventory and KML for visualization in tools like Google Earth.
Limitations
- The dataset is a snapshot from a single ship over a limited 39-day window, not a long-term time series.
- Specific row counts, column details, and data volume are unknown from the provided metadata.
- Data is from 2010 and may be stale for modeling current oceanographic conditions.
Provenance
- Source
- NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).
- Collection Method
- In-situ data collected via Conductivity-Temperature-Depth (CTD) sensors and Expendable Bathythermographs (XBTs) aboard NOAA Ship Gordon Gunter, transmitted via the Global Telecommunication System (GTS) to the GTSPP.
- Time Range
- 2010-04-22 to 2010-05-30.
- Freshness
- null
- Geography
- Gulf of Mexico, specific to the area of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill event.