Data Access Options
Project
Gliders in the Gulf Stream, New England Seamount Acoustics (NESMA)
Site
Gulf Stream
Date Range
2023-03-16 to 2023-05-22
Sensors
This file contains data from the following specific instruments: Sea-Bird SBE 41CP CTD, Seapoint chlorophyll fluorometer.
Summary
The overarching goal of this project is to collect high resolution transects across the Gulf Stream. Though the speed of the Gulf Stream greatly exceeds the speed of a glider, gliders can be flown across the current as they are advected downstream. Missions prior to 2015 were conducted downstream (northeast) of Cape Hatteras, primarily between Cape Cod and Bermuda; missions since 2015 begin in Miami, FL and are planned to end on the New England continental shelf. During a typical 100-day mission between Miami and Cape Cod, a single glider completes 6-10 crossings of the Gulf Stream, returning approximately 800 profiles to the shallower of the sea floor or 1000 m. The current operational goal is to maintain at least one glider in the Gulf Stream at all times. Additional plots of these data are available at http://gliders.whoi.edu.
Contributors
Robert Todd (PrincipalInvestigator), Instrument Development Group (processor), Jennifer Sevadjian (resourceProvider)
References
Heiderich, J., R.E. Todd (2020). Along-stream evolution of Gulf Stream volume transport. J. Phys. Oceanogr., 50(8), 2251-2270. doi: 10.1175/JPO-D-19-0303.1; Todd, R. E. (2021). Gulf Stream mean and eddy kinetic energy: three-dimensional estimates from underwater glider observations. Geophysical Research Letters, 48, e2020GL090281. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL090281
Acknowledgement
This project has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, NOAA Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program (GOMO), Eastman, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Data distribution support is provided by the Instrument Development Group at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.