Abstract:

This dataset contains a seasonal and annual climatology of reconstructed near-surface current data of satellite-tracked 15 m drogued and undrogued drifters observations from February 1979 to June 2015 using the NOAA’s Global Drifter Program for the Gulf of Mexico. The data has a horizontal resolution of 0.125 deg x 0.125 deg. The annual climatological dataset incorporates more than 29 million, six-hour position/velocity estimates scattered throughout the world’s ice-free oceans, from February 1979 to June 2015. The seasonal means used the same data, however, they are 15-days climatological means for different seasons. About 56% of the available data points are from undrogued drifters. Near-surface velocity climatology for the global ocean from drifter observations is available under GRIIDC Unique Dataset Identifier (UDI) R4.x265.000:0013 (DOI: 10.7266/N7SJ1HN5). This dataset supports the publication: Drouin, K. L., Mariano, A. J., Ryan, E. H., & Laurindo, L. C. (2019). Lagrangian simulation of oil trajectories in the Florida Straits. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 140, 204–218. doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2019.01.031

Suggested Citation:

Laurindo, L.C.. 2019. Near-surface velocity 15-day seasonal and annual climatology for the eastern Gulf of Mexico from drifter observations from 1979 to 2015. Distributed by: GRIIDC, Harte Research Institute, Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. doi:10.7266/n7-tvm2-7b13

Publications:

Drouin, K. L., Mariano, A. J., Ryan, E. H., & Laurindo, L. C. (2019). Lagrangian simulation of oil trajectories in the Florida Straits. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 140, 204–218. doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2019.01.031

Purpose:

This data set was generated to advect Lagrangian particles as part of a floating oil spill model.

Data Parameters and Units:

Longitude (decimal degrees), latitude (decimal degrees), seasonal zonal velocity for the current date (m/s), seasonal meridional velocity for the current date (m/s). zonal velocity std. deviation (m/s), meridional velocity std. deviation (m/s), long-term mean zonal velocity (m/s), long-term mean meridional velocity (m/s). Note the filenames numbers in the uv_seasonal_* represent the date and that information can be found in the infor_uv_seasonal.txt.

Methods:

The near-surface velocity climatology for the Florida and Loop Currents is computed using observations from the NOAA Global Drifter Program (GDP) drifters following the methods described in Laurindo et al. (2017) (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dsr.2017.04.009). Please note that a global version of this dataset is freely distributed by the NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic (AOML) at http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/gdp/mean_velocity.php. It differs from the fields described here by the facts that (a) it is mapped at the lower 0.25° x 0.25° x 1-month resolution, (b) is computed using more recent data, and (c) incorporates a number of improvements and bug fixes (please refer to the AOML website for the complete list of updates).

Provenance and Historical References:

Laurindo, L. C., Mariano, A. J., & Lumpkin, R. (2017). An improved near-surface velocity climatology for the global ocean from drifter observations. Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers. doi:10.1016/j.dsr.2017.04.009

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