Gulf of Mexico Ocean Profiles from Deepwater Horizon Response

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data products and in situ oceanographic data collected in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill event in the Gulf of Mexico from May to December 2010. The Global Temperature and Salinity Profile Programme received near-realtime data as TESAC messages from the Global Telecommunication System, with profiles collected by floats. This dataset is available in CSV, NetCDF, and GTSPP ASCII formats and includes inventory files and visual plots.

Use Cases

• Analyzing vertical temperature and salinity profiles to assess changes in water column structure post-spill.
• Mapping the spatial distribution of float-collected data using the provided KML file for geographic visualization.
• Studying near-realtime oceanographic conditions during the 2010 spill response period.
• Comparing data across multiple standard formats (CSV, NetCDF, GTSPP ASCII) for interoperability.

Strengths

• Data collection is updated weekly by automated processes performed by NODC, indicating a maintained pipeline.
• Includes multiple data formats (CSV, NetCDF, GTSPP ASCII) and auxiliary files like inventory and profile plots.
• Covers a specific, critical event (Deepwater Horizon oil spill) with data from May 24 to December 6, 2010.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, file size, specific column names, and license are unknown across all platforms.
• There is a conflict in the last updated date: datagov reports 2026-03-05, while nasa_earthdata reports 2010-12 06.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Near-realtime data received as TESAC messages from the Global Telecommunication System (GTS) by the Global Temperature and Salinity Profile Programme (GTSPP).

Time Range

2010-05-24 to 2010-12-06

Freshness

2026-03 05 (from datagov, though conflicting with nasa_earthdata)

Geography

Gulf of Mexico