TAO Mooring: Water Temperature and Turbulence at 0N,140W

From 2005-09-23 to 2017-12-31, this dataset provides in-situ water temperature and derived turbulence quantities from chipod instruments on a Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) Array mooring in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Measurements were taken at seven specific depths between 29 and 119 meters, with data gaps present. The data, stored in NetCDF format, are intended for studying ocean mixing and thermal structure.

Use Cases

• Analyzing temporal trends in ocean turbulence based on spectral scaling of thermistor data.
• Studying vertical thermal structure and mixing at specific depths (29m to 119m).
• Validating ocean circulation and climate models using in-situ mooring data from the TAO array.
• Investigating the relationship between water temperature and derived turbulence metrics over a multi-year period.

Strengths

• Provides a long-term time series spanning over 12 years, from 2005 to 2017.
• Contains data from seven distinct depth levels, offering a vertical profile.
• Originates from the established Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) Array, a key observational network.

Limitations

• Metadata completeness is low: column names, row counts, and license information are unavailable across all sources.
• The data contains gaps within the stated time range, indicating incomplete temporal coverage.
• There is a conflict in the 'last updated' metadata between sources (2017-12-31 vs. 2026-04-01).

Provenance

Source

NOAA_NCEI

Collection Method

Measured in situ with chipod instruments mounted on a mooring line.

Time Range

2005-09-23 to 2017-12-31

Freshness

2026-04-01 15:06:40.015043

Geography

Equatorial Pacific Ocean at 0N,140W