Short Name:
SAILDRONE_ARCTIC

Saildrone Arctic field campaign surface and ADCP measurements for NOPP-MISST project

Saildrone is a wind and solar powered unmanned surface vehicle (USV) capable of long distance deployments lasting up to 12 months and providing high quality, near real-time, multivariate surface ocean and atmospheric observations while transiting at typical speeds of 3-5 knots. The drone is autonomous in that it may be guided remotely from land while being completely wind driven. The saildrone Arctic campaign involved the deployment of a fleet of 5 saildrones, jointly funded by NASA and NOAA, from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, within the Bering and Chukchi Seas to the ice edge and back over a 150-day period from 15 May 2019 to 11 October 2019. Scientific objectives include collecting upper ocean temperature profiles with a full suite of ocean measurements, which could lead to significant improvements in modeling of diurnal warming. Additionally, these new data will provide additional Arctic SST observations to benefit SST algorithm development and validation, and collected additional data for studies of air- sea-ice interactions. For the Arctic cruises, saildrones were equipped with a suite of instruments that included a CTD, IR pyrometer, fluorometer, dissolved oxygen sensor, anemometer, barometer, and Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP). Additionally, four temperature data loggers were positioned vertically along hull to provide further information on thermal variability near the ocean surface. This Saildrone Arctic dataset is comprised of 3 data files for each of the two NASA-funded saildrones deployed. The one file type contains saildrone platform telemetry and near-surface observational data (air temperature, sea surface skin and bulk temperatures, salinity, oxygen and chlorophyll-a concentrations, barometric pressure, wind speed and direction) spanning the entire cruise at 1 minute temporal resolution. The second file type contains the ADCP current vector data for each of the deployed saildrones that is depth-resolved to 100m at 2m intervals and binned temporally at 1 minute resolution. The third file type, contains the temperature logger measurement data previously described. All data files are in netCDF format and CF/ACDD compliant consistent with the NOAA/NCEI specification.

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