Data

AOML maintains a variety of databases that provide access to a wide range of publicly available oceanographic and meteorological data and products. A brief description and list of the websites that house these data and products is provided below for reference.

 

Hurricane Data

The Hurricane Research Division collects a variety of data sets on tropical cyclones. Each Atlantic and East Pacific hurricane season we conduct a field program in which we collect these data sets from the NOAA aircraft and process them. Aircraft radar and dropsonde data are available and are organized by storm and year.

 

Coral Data

 

Ocean Acidification Product Suite 

A high resolution monitoring product has been developed that maps current ocean acidification in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.

 

Global Carbon Cycle (GCC) Data Products

As part of its participation in NOAA’s Global Carbon Cycle Program, AOML’s goal is to assess the ocean’s role in controlling atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels with a focus on observations of the exchange of CO2 across the air-sea interface and its eventual penetration into the water masses of the deep ocean. The GCC data include dissolved inorganic compound (DIC) measurements from both long-line and short cruises, and underway partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) measurements from Ships of Opportunity (SOOP) and NOAA ships.

 

ARGO Center

Argo is an international program that calls for the deployment of 3,000 free drifting profiling floats, distributed over the global oceans, which measure the temperature and salinity in the upper 2,000 m of the ocean providing 100,000 T/S profiles and reference velocity measurements per year. This will allow continuous monitoring of the climate state of the ocean, with all data being relayed and made publicly available within hours after collection.

 

Global Drifter Program

AOML's contribution to the Global Drifter Program consists of the Drifter Operations Center (DOC) and the Drifter Data Assembly Center (DAC). The DOC manages global drifter deployments using volunteer ships of the Ship of Opportunity Program, research ships, and aircraft. The DAC verifies that the drifters are operational, distributes the data to meteorological services via the global telecommunications system, assembles, quality controls, and makes the data available on the web, and offers drifter-derived products.

  • Global Surface Currents

    This site provides quarterly reports on the state of the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) for near-surface currents.

  • Climatology of Surface Currents

    A climatology of monthly currents at 1° x 1° resolution is provided, calculated from surface drifter observations.

  • Animation of Surface Currents

    Animations of seasonal currents and sea surface temperature are provided, derived from surface drifter observations.

 

Atlantic Meridional Heat Transport

This site provides data and quarterly reports on the state of the ocean’s meridional oceanic heat transport in the Atlantic Ocean. AOML collects XBT data on two lines spanning the subtropical oceans: in the North Atlantic since 1995 along AX7 running between Spain and Miami, Florida and in the South Atlantic since 2002 along AX18 between Cape Town, South Africa and Buenos Aires, Argentina. These data capture the upper limb of the Meridional Overturning Circulation transport, an important benchmark for integrated air-sea fluxes and numerical model performance.

 

Satellite Ocean Monitoring

Products are derived from satellite-derived altimetric sea height anomaly (SHA) fields and sea surface temperature (SST). These products are validated using data from a variety of platforms, such as expendable bathythermographs (XBTs), drifters, moorings, and profiling floats. Real-time global geostrophic surface currents, tropical cyclone heat potential, and long term time series of important oceanographic variables are available through these websites.

 

Coast Watch Caribbean/Gulf of Mexico Regional Node

CoastWatch is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration program that provides remotely sensed satellite and other environmental data to government decision makers and academic researchers. The Caribbean/Gulf of Mexico Regional Node is one of several sites throughout the United States designed for the processing and distribution of information in near-real-time. The primary data source for CoastWatch is the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) on the NOAA series polar-orbiting weather satellites.

   

Altimetric Estimates of Surface Currents

The spatial and temporal variability of several surface currents which are key components of the Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) are monitored by these products. The Agulhas and North Brazil Currents, and their associated rings, as well as the Yucatan and Florida currents, are some of the currents monitored through this project.

 

High Density XBT Transects

The objectives of the five high density transects in the Atlantic are to measure the upper ocean thermal structure in the center of the subtropical gyre, to investigate the meridional structure of the subtropical gyre and Gulf Stream, and to characterize both the mean and the time-dependent upper ocean properties of the tropical portion of the Meridional Overturning Circulation and of the shallow Subtropical Cell in the Tropical Atlantic.

 

 

Copyright Notice

As required by 17 U.S.C. 403, third parties producing copyrighted works consisting predominantly of the material produced by U.S. government agencies must provide notice with such work(s) identifying the U.S. Government material incorporated and stating that such material is not subject to copyright protection. The information on government web pages is in the public domain unless specifically annotated otherwise (copyright may be held elsewhere) and may therefore be used freely by the public.

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