Abstract:
Model output of dynamical properties (location, depth, temperature, salinity, and density) along Lagrangian drifter trajectories in estuarine and shelf waters of Mississippi Bight region of the northern Gulf of Mexico. Drifter releases were initiated from the surface level, bottom level and mid-water column level at 24 known oyster spawning locations within the estuarine waters of Mississippi (Mississippi Sound), Alabama (Mobile Bay) and Louisiana (Chandeleur and Breton Sounds). The model application was developed as part of the GOMRI-funded CONCORDE consortium and has been configured with 400 m spatial resolution and 24 vertical layers. Observed freshwater input derived from available tide gauge stations are applied as riverine forcing, and the Naval Research Laboratory-Navy Coastal Ocean Model (NRL-NCOM) output at 1km was used as outer boundary condition forcing. Surface atmospheric forcing is from a 1 km hourly product that resolves the diurnal sea breeze, which was also developed as part of the CONCORDE consortium modeling component (the CONCORDE Meteorological Analysis - CMA). The model output provided in this dataset provides 5-minute temporal resolution of physical parameters (currents, temperature, salinity, water levels and other model parameters) for the oyster recruitment timeframe of summer/fall 2017 (May 14 to October 26, 2017). Other related data are available under GRIIDC Unique Dataset Identifier (UDIs) MS.x841.000:0008 (DOI: 10.7266/SPKQN0AT), MS.x841.000:0010 (DOI: 10.7266/ZKM29VT2), MS.x841.000:0011 (DOI: 10.7266/QXZVP60A), MS.x841.000:0012 (DOI: 10.7266/CGFJ6TY4), and MS.x841.000:0013 (DOI: 10.7266/FYMFTNPP).
Suggested Citation:
Kemal Cambazoglu, Jerry Wiggert, Chudong Pan. 2020. Modeled drifter simulations for oyster larvae trajectory in Mississippi Sound and Bight from 2017-05-14 to 2017-10-26. Distributed by: GRIIDC, Harte Research Institute, Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. doi:10.7266/2SP9XTRT
Data Parameters and Units:
Key parameters are: Ocean_time, Time since initialization, (seconds since 2014-01-01 00:00:00); lat, Latitude (decimal degrees); lon, Longitude, (decimal degrees), depth, Bathymetry depth, (m); Xgrid, Float locations in x dimension, (grid cell); Ygrid, Float locations in y dimension, (grid cell); Zgrid, Float locations in z dimension, (grid cell); temp, Temperature (degrees Celsius); salt, Salinity, (PSU); rho, Density (kg*m^-3).
The modeled oyster larvae drifter NetCDF files contain data for a total of 6696 drifters controlled by a float input parameters file of the numerical model. The drifters are released at 24 different geographical locations from at 3 different depths (surface, bottom, mid-water column), starting at 3 initial release times (14 May 2015, 14 May 2016, 14 May 2017) for 31 consecutive days.
In the modeled oyster larvae drifter NetCDF file outputs some of the drifters have no info/data, i.e. nans/zeroes: This is because a single control file was used for all three simulations of 2015, 2016 and 2017 (GRIIDC datasets MS.x841.000:0010, MS.x841.000:0008, and MS.x841.000:0009 respectively). The control file contains release coordinate, depth, duration as well as release time. We conducted a separate simulation for each year. However, since a single file contained the release time for each year (2015, 2016 and 2017) for this dataset (MS.x841.000:0009) and other two datasets (MS.x841.000:0008 and MS.x841.000:00010), when a simulation was completed for only one of those years, those drifters scheduled to release in other years were never released but their information was still populated as NaN's since their information existed in the control file.
For this simulation of 2017, there is drifter release and corresponding data in 2017 and no data for 2015 and 2016 but it is written. Therefore, the only indices 4465-6696 of each vector or matrix has information and the remaining entries 1-4465 are NaNs.