NOAA Oculus Seaglider 2017: Bering Sea Water Column Measurements

NOAA-PMEL's 2017 Oculus seaglider (SG401) data set contains temperature, salinity, chlorophyll, and depth measurements from the Bering Sea, collected between July 26 and September 26, 2017. The autonomous glider operated in shallow waters less than 200m deep, collecting data from the surface to 63.1 meters depth across a defined area of the middle Bering Sea shelf. Data are delivered as a NetCDF-4-compatible file with quality flags and defined missing value indicators.

Use Cases

• Modeling seasonal changes in Bering Sea water properties based on temperature and salinity time series.
• Analyzing chlorophyll distribution as a proxy for phytoplankton biomass in a defined shelf region.
• Studying vertical water column structure based on depth-profiled measurements of temperature, salinity, and chlorophyll.
• Calibrating satellite ocean color data using in-situ chlorophyll measurements from the described glider track.

Strengths

• Data includes quality flag variables for each measured parameter, noted as [variable]_qc.
• Spatial coverage is precisely defined from 57.80° to 58.72° N latitude and -170.25° to -168.86° W longitude.
• Vertical profiling covers the surface to 63.1 meters depth, relevant for the shallow-water operational design (<200m).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last updated 2017-09-26 00:00:00; freshness should be verified for current applications.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.

Provenance

Source

NOAA/PMEL (Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory), accessed via NASA Earthdata.

Collection Method

Collected by an autonomous Oculus seaglider (SG401), a descendant of the University of Washington Applied Physics Lab Seaglider.

Time Range

2017-07 26 to 2017-09-26

Freshness

Last updated 2017-09-26 00:00:00

Geography

Middle Bering Sea shelf, from 57.80° to 58.72° N latitude and -170.25° to -168.86° W longitude.