Abstract:

This dataset contains the data for the publication Huang et. al (2021) which studied how the Gulf of Mexico Loop Current (LC) system behaviors are influenced by upstream mesoscale eddies within the Caribbean Sea. Included in this dataset are eddy trajectory, satellite altimetry, sea surface salinity and ocean color data. The analysis of these data demonstrates that mesoscale eddies originating in the western tropical Atlantic Ocean enter the Gulf of Mexico influence the LC. All the datasets used are publicly available and can be downloaded online, however, the spatial and temporal extents of these data used in the study have been extracted and combined in this dataset. Some of the datasets in this data package have been converted to Matlab (.mat) files. This dataset supports the publication: Huang, M., Liang, X., Zhu, Y., Liu, Y., & Weisberg, R. H. (2021). Eddies Connect the Tropical Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Geophysical Research Letters, 48(4). doi:10.1029/2020gl091277.

Suggested Citation:

Huang, Minghai, Xinfeng Liang, Yingli Zhu, Yonggang Liu, and Robert H. Weisberg. 2021. Dataset for: Eddies Connect the Tropical Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Distributed by: GRIIDC, Harte Research Institute, Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. doi:10.7266/MYNV7SX2

Publications:

Huang, M., Liang, X., Zhu, Y., Liu, Y., & Weisberg, R. H. (2021). Eddies Connect the Tropical Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Geophysical Research Letters, 48(4). doi:10.1029/2020gl091277

Purpose:

Explore the roles of mesoscale eddies in connecting the tropical Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico by using various satellite products, including altimetry, eddy trajectory, sea surface salinity, and chlorophyll.

Data Parameters and Units:

The files "Salinity_SMOS.mat" and "Salinity_time.mat" contains salinity data and the variables included are: SSS_SMOS [the value of sea surface salinity from SMOS (PSU)]; Lon [longitude (Degrees)]; Lat [Latitude (Degrees)]; and timeSMOS [the time information of the salinity data (YYYYMMDD)]. The files "Chlorophyll.mat" and "Chlorophyll_time.mat" contains chlorophyll data and the variables included are: chlall [the value of chlorophyll (µg/L)]; Lon [longitude (Degrees)]; Lat [Latitude (Degrees)]; and timemerged_chlor [the time information of the chlorophyll data (YYYYMMDD)]. The folder "IndividualEddyCase" contains the data for the three individual eddy cases organized under separate sub-folders for case1, case2, and case3. The variables included are: ugos2no [east-west direction geostrophic current (m/s)]; vgos2 [north-south direction geostrophic current (m/s)]; adt3 [absolute dynamic height, (ADT)]; Lon2 [longitude geostrophic current and absolute dynamic height, (Degrees)]; Lat2, [latitude geostrophic current and absolute dynamic height, (Degrees)]; latl [latitude boundary of the eddy, (Degrees)]; lonl [longitude boundary of the eddy, (Degrees)]; lonll [longitude location of the snapshot (Degrees)]; and latll [latitude location of the snapshot (Degrees)]. The netCDF file "eddy_trajectory_2.0exp_19930101_20180118.nc" contains the mesoscale eddy trajectory data. The variables included are: amplitude [magnitude of the height difference between the extremum of sea level anomaly (SLA) within the eddy and the SLA around the contour defining the eddy perimeter (cm)]; cyclonic_type [flow orientation (cyclonic -1; anti-cyclonic +1)]; latitude [observation latitude (degrees north)]; longitude [observation longitude (degrees east)]; observation_number [observation sequence number, days from eddy start (ordinal)]; observed_flag [observed value flag (observed 0; interpolated +1)]; speed_average [average speed of the contour defining the speed radius (cm/s)]; speed_radius [radius of a circle whose area is equal to that enclosed by the contour of maximum circum-average speed (km)]; time [Time (days since 1950-01-01 00:00:00 UTC)]; and track [eddy identification number (ordinal)]. All the datasets used are publicly available and can be download online from the sources described below: 1. Eddy trajectory data: The mesoscale eddy trajectory product is from the “Mesoscale Eddy Trajectory Atlas Product” distributed by AVISO+ (https://www.aviso.altimetry.fr/). Time range: 1993-2018 2. Altimetry data: The altimetry datasets can be obtained from the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS, https://marine.copernicus.eu/). Time range: 1993-2018 3. Sea surface salinity data: The sea surface salinity dataset is from the European Space Agency Earth Explorer mission (SMOS, https://earth.esa.int/web/guest/missions/esa-operational-eo-missions/smos). Time range: 2010-2017 4. Chlorophyll data: The chlorophyll dataset is available at GlobColour (https://hermes.acri.fr/). Time range: 1998-2019

Methods:

Eddy trajectory, satellite altimetry, sea surface salinity and ocean color datasets were combined to illustrate how the Gulf of Mexico Loop Current (LC) system behaviors are influenced by upstream mesoscale eddies within the Caribbean Sea. For detailed methods, please refer to the "data and methods" section of the associated publication Huang et al., 2021.

Individual Files: