SCOPE CTD Casts for Nearshore Oil Transport Modeling

December 6-17, 2013, data includes temperature, conductivity, salinity, sound velocity, and density profiles from 26 CTD casts off Santa Rosa Island, Florida. Collected during the Surfzone Coastal Oil Pathway Experiment (SCOPE), this dataset captures inner-shelf and surf-zone processes under varied winter storm conditions. It was created by the Consortium for Advanced Research on Transport of Hydrocarbon in the Environment (CARTHE) with funding from the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative.

Use Cases

• Calibrating nearshore hydrodynamic models using temperature and salinity profiles.
• Analyzing water column stratification and mixing from density and conductivity data.
• Studying surf-zone processes responsible for oil transport using high-resolution time-series measurements.
• Assessing the impact of synoptic winter storms on coastal water properties.

Strengths

• High temporal resolution with a nominal 2-second sampling rate during casts.
• Captured a wide range of environmental forcing during a three-week intensive field campaign.
• Cross-platform presence on NASA EarthData and Data.gov indicates recognized importance.

Limitations

• Key metadata conflicts exist: last updated date is reported as both 2013-12-17 and 2026-03-05.
• Specific row count, file size, and complete column names are unknown across all sources.
• Geographic coverage is limited to a specific 12-day period near Santa Rosa Island.

Provenance

Source

Consortium for Advanced Research on Transport of Hydrocarbon in the Environment (CARTHE).

Collection Method

Collected via shipboard CTD casts, part of the larger SCOPE field campaign employing fixed instruments, drifters, dye releases, and moving-vessel platforms.

Time Range

2013-12-06 to 2013-12-17

Freshness

Most recent platform update recorded was 2026-03-05, though the underlying data is from 2013.

Geography

Near Santa Rosa Island, Florida, in the Gulf of Mexico, sampling depths from 10 to 23 meters.