South Atlantic Ocean Glider Trajectory with Temperature and Salinity Profiles

Physical trajectory and profile data from the third leg of the Challenger Mission, a modern re-creation of the historic 1872 HMS Challenger ocean survey. Data includes temperature, salinity, conductivity, and density measurements collected by an autonomous underwater glider (ru29) deployed by Rutgers University from June 2015 to March 2016. The National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) received and preserved this data via the Integrated Ocean Observing System's National Glider Data Assembly Center (IOOS NGDAC).

Use Cases

• Analyze temperature and salinity profiles to study water mass distribution and mixing in the South Atlantic Ocean.
• Correlate density and conductivity measurements to validate regional oceanographic models.
• Map the glider's physical trajectory to understand subsurface current patterns and transport.
• Assimilate real-time temperature and salinity data into numerical weather prediction models to improve forecast accuracy.

Strengths

• Data spans a 9-month continuous deployment from June 2015 to March 2016.
• Includes core physical oceanographic properties (temperature, salinity, conductivity, density) for profile analysis.
• Data was checked for compliance and aggregated into a single netCDF file by the IOOS National Glider Data Assembly Center.

Limitations

• Exact row count, column details, and sample size are unknown.
• Data is from a single glider deployment, limiting spatial coverage to its specific trajectory.
• The dataset is temporally static, with the last update in March 2016.

Provenance

Source

Integrated Ocean Observing System's National Glider Data Assembly Center (IOOS NGDAC), preserved by NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).

Collection Method

Measurements collected by an autonomous underwater glider (ru29) deployed by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

Time Range

2015-06-23 to 2016-03-31

Freshness

Data collection ended on 2016-03-31; no update frequency specified.

Geography

South Atlantic Ocean, on a trajectory from Brazil to South Africa.