Thursday, October 24, 2019

The PO.DAAC is pleased to announce the availability of additional datasets from the NASA SPURS-2 field campaign. Following prior releases of thirteen SPURS-2 datasets, this third release includes a further eight new datasets: PAL (Acoustic Passive Listener), Seaglider, drifter, towed Surface Salinity Profile (SSP), research vessel meteorology and surface water observations, Pico Mooring, Neutrally Buoyant Float, and underway data from the sailing vessel Lady Amber. The drifter collection is comprised of data from SVP/SVP-S, CODE, ADOS, AOML, and tethered CARTHE-SUPRACT drifter deployments during SPURS-2, the latter four types also providing subsurface observations at fixed depths in addition to the standard surface measurements characteristic of drifters more generally. The PICO (Platform Instrumentation for Continuous Observations) mooring collection is comprised of surface meteorological and “prawler” profiling CTD observations from the two PICO moorings deployed during SPURS-2.

The SPURS (Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study) project is a NASA-funded oceanographic process study and associated field program that aims to elucidate key mechanisms responsible for near-surface salinity variations in the oceans. SPURS employs a suite of state-of-the-art in-situ sampling technologies that, combined with remotely sensed salinity fields from the Aquarius/SAC-D, SMAP and SMOS satellites, provide a detailed characterization of salinity structure over a continuum of spatio-temporal scales. While SPURS-1 focused on the salinity maximum region of the sub-tropical N. Atlantic, SPURS-2 concentrated on the dynamic and seasonally variable, rainfall-dominated region of the eastern tropical Pacific centered at 10°N, 125°W. The SPURS-2 campaign involved two month-long cruises by the R/V Revelle in August-September 2016 and October-November 2017 combined with complementary sampling on a more continuous basis over this period by the schooner Lady Amber. Twenty-seven datasets will likely comprise the complete SPURS-2 collection, twenty-one of which have been finalized and are now available via the PO.DAAC.  Further releases of SPURS-2 datasets will occur in the coming months.

The SPURS-2 datasets are described, discoverable and accessible via the PO.DAAC data portal.  Further information on SPURS is available from the project website and also via the SPURS field campaign page on the PO.DAAC portal.

DOI10.5067/SPUR2-PALS0
          10.5067/SPUR2-GLID1
          10.5067/SPUR2-SSP00
          10.5067/SPUR2-DRIFT
          10.5067/SPUR2-MOOR2
          10.5067/SPUR2-NBFLT
          10.5067/SPUR2-LAMBR
          10.5067/SPUR2-MET00

Citation: Lindstrom, E.J., J.B. Edson, J.J. Schanze, and A.Y. Shcherbina. 2019. SPURS-2: Salinity Processes in the Upper-ocean Regional Study 2. The eastern equatorial Pacific experiment. Oceanography 32(2):15–19, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2019.207.

Comments/Questions? Please contact podaac@podaac.jpl.nasa.gov or visit the PO.DAAC Forum.