Global Lagrangian Drifter Data

Satellite-tracked drifting buoys ("drifters") collect measurements of upper ocean currents and sea surface temperatures (SST) around the world as part of the Global Drifter Program.

Drifter locations are estimated from 16-20 satellite fixes per day, per drifter. The Drifter Data Assembly Center (DAC) at NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) assembles these raw data, applies quality control procedures, and interpolates them via kriging to regular six-hour intervals. The raw observations and processed data are archived at AOML and at the Marine Environmental Data Services (MEDS) in Canada.

Two types of data are available: "metadata" contains deployment location and time, time of drogue (sea anchor) loss, date of final transmission, etc. for each drifter. "Interpolated data" contains the quality-controlled, interpolated drifter observations.

Data Availability

Warning: mktime(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /aoml/envids/gld/SpatialTemporalBounds.php on line 19

Warning: mktime(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /aoml/envids/gld/SpatialTemporalBounds.php on line 23

Observation Dates: 1979/02/15 to 2012/12/31
Geographical Coordinates: latitude [90,-74] and longitude [-180,180]