Table of Contents

• Coverage
• Dataset Description
  • Data Processing Description
• Data Files
• Parameters
• Instruments
• Deployments
• Project Information
• Program Information
• Funding

ARGOS Tracked Near Surface Drifter Data
The following was extracted from the Cruise Report of the N.B. Palmer Cruise 01-03. The complete cruise report can be seen here or on the SO GLOBEC web site under the object "Inventory"

2.0 Drifter Measurements (Bob Beardsley and Dick Limeburner)
Surface drifters are being deployed and tracked via satellite to study the near surface Lagrangian currents in the SO GLOBEC study area on the western Antarctic Peninsula Shelf. Each drifter has a small (~ 30 cm diameter) surface float with ARGOS transmitter and batteries tethered to a holey sock drogue centered at 15 m below the surface. The drogue, about 10 m tall and 1 m in diameter, is designed to "lock" itself to the water so that the surface float follows the mean water motion at 15 m depth with very little slippage even in high winds. Thus measuring the drifter's position as a function of time provides a Lagrangian measurement of the 15-m ocean current.

Data contributed by:
Richard Limeburner
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Woods Hole, MA 02543
e-mail: rlimeburner@whoi.edu

file updated June 18 2012; smr.

BCO-DMO made the following changes to the formatting of the data: Calculated actual 'yrday_gmt' values from the original 'yrday_special' column; Added cruiseid; Re-formatted all values from scientific notation to integers; Added month_gmt, day_gmt, and time_gmt.

The fundamental objectives of United States Global Ocean Ecosystems Dynamics (U.S. GLOBEC) Program are dependent upon the cooperation of scientists from several disciplines. Physicists, biologists, and chemists must make use of data collected during U.S. GLOBEC field programs to further our understanding of the interplay of physics, biology, and chemistry. Our objectives require quantitative analysis of interdisciplinary data sets and, therefore, data must be exchanged between researchers. To extract the full scientific value, data must be made available to the scientific community on a timely basis.

U.S. GLOBEC (GLOBal ocean ECosystems dynamics) is a research program organized by oceanographers and fisheries scientists to address the question of how global climate change may affect the abundance and production of animals in the sea.

The U.S. GLOBEC Program currently had major research efforts underway in the Georges Bank / Northwest Atlantic Region, and the Northeast Pacific (with components in the California Current and in the Coastal Gulf of Alaska). U.S. GLOBEC was a major contributor to International GLOBEC efforts in the Southern Ocean and Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP).