The SPURS (Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study) project is an oceanographic process study and associated field program that aim to elucidate key mechanisms responsible for near-surface salinity variations in the oceans. The project involves two field campaigns and a series of cruises in regions of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans exhibiting salinity extremes. 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 and SMOS satellites, provide a detailed characterization of salinity structure over a continuum of spatio-temporal scales. The SPURS-1 campaign involved a series of 5 cruises during 2012 - 2013 seeking to characterize the salinity structure and balance in a high salinity, high evaporation, and low rainfall region of the subtropical North Atlantic. It aims to resolve processes responsible for maintaining the subtropical surface salinity maximum in this region and within a 900 x 800-mile square study area centered at 25N, 38W. The SPURS central mooring consisted of a surface meteorological package, surface oceanographic instruments, and subsurface, non-real time oceanographic instruments including CTD, ADCP sensors and current meters providing continuous series of temperature, salinity and current profile observations. Meteorological observations include wind speed, air temperature, precipitation, and radiative flux. The mooring was deployed in 5,535 meters of water at N24:34.867, W38 on 14 September 2012, was serviced on 25 March 2013 and recovered on 30 September 2013. WHOI mooring data files include surface and subsurface time series of sea temperature, skin temperature, salinity, conductivity, wind velocity, air temperature, relative humidity, precipitation rate, barometric pressure, shortwave and longwave radiation, short/longwave flux, heat Flux, wind Speed and direction.

The SPURS (Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study) project is an oceanographic process study and associated field program that aim to elucidate key mechanisms responsible for near-surface salinity variations in the oceans. The project involves two field campaigns and a series of cruises in regions of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans exhibiting salinity extremes. 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 and SMOS satellites, provide a detailed characterization of salinity structure over a continuum of spatio-temporal scales. The SPURS-1 campaign involved a series of 5 cruises during 2012 - 2013 seeking to characterize the salinity structure and balance in a high salinity, high evaporation, and low rainfall region of the subtropical North Atlantic. It aims to resolve processes responsible for maintaining the subtropical surface salinity maximum in this region and within a 900 x 800-mile square study area centered at 25N, 38W. The Seasoar is a towed vehicle equipped with impeller-forced wings that can be rotated on command to allow the vehicle to undulate in the upper ocean. Generally, Seasoar operates between the surface and about 400 meters depth while being towed on faired cable at about eight knots. A typical dive cycle takes about 12 minutes to complete, providing an up and down profile every 3 km. For SPURS-1, a Seasoar was deployed exclusively during the Sarmiento cruise over the period 22 Mar-8 Apr, 2013 and to a maximum depth of 312m. The Seasoar towed sensor system was equipped with dual pumped temperature/conductivity sensors. The Seasoar data in netCDF form here contains a highly processed 1-meter gridded version of the original source dataset, which is comprised of temperature, conductivity, salinity, pressure observations from 1144 casts during 2013 Spring SPURS Cruise.

The SPURS (Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study) project is an oceanographic process study and associated field program that aim to elucidate key mechanisms responsible for near-surface salinity variations in the oceans. The project involves two field campaigns and a series of cruises in regions of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans exhibiting salinity extremes. 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 and SMOS satellites, provide a detailed characterization of salinity structure over a continuum of spatio-temporal scales. The SPURS-1 campaign involved a series of 5 cruises during 2012 - 2013 seeking to characterize the salinity structure and balance in a high salinity, high evaporation, and low rainfall region of the subtropical North Atlantic. It aims to resolve processes responsible for maintaining the subtropical surface salinity maximum in this region and within a 900 x 800-mile square study area centered at 25N, 38W. The Seaglider is an autonomous profiler measuring salinity and temperature. Three Seagliders were deployed on the Knorr cruise in September 2012. These were retrieved during the first Endeavor cruise, and then redeployed. The Seagliders typically made loops or butterfly patterns around the central SPURS mooring, diving to 1000 m. Seaglider data files contain vertically resolved trajectory series of conductivity, salinity, temperature, pressure, depth observations.

The SPURS (Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study) project is an oceanographic process study and associated field program that aim to elucidate key mechanisms responsible for near-surface salinity variations in the oceans. The project involves two field campaigns and a series of cruises in regions of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans exhibiting salinity extremes. 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 and SMOS satellites, provide a detailed characterization of salinity structure over a continuum of spatio-temporal scales. The SPURS-1 campaign involved a series of 5 cruises during 2012 - 2013 seeking to characterize the salinity structure and balance in a high salinity, high evaporation, and low rainfall region of the subtropical North Atlantic. It aims to resolve processes responsible for maintaining the subtropical surface salinity maximum in this region and within a 900 x 800-mile square study area centered at 25N, 38W. The Tenuse (Slocum) glider is an autonomous undulating profiler measuring salinity and temperature. It was deployed from the Thalassa on 21-August and recovered by the Knorr on 4-October-2012. It made a total of about 1400 profiles during that period (1-2 profiles/hour), going from the surface to 200 m. Resulting trajectory profile data from the Tenuse glider include georeferenced CTD observations on salinity, temperature, pressure, and depth.

The SPURS (Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study) project is an oceanographic process study and associated field program that aim to elucidate key mechanisms responsible for near-surface salinity variations in the oceans. The project involves two field campaigns and a series of cruises in regions of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans exhibiting salinity extremes. 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 and SMOS satellites, provide a detailed characterization of salinity structure over a continuum of spatio-temporal scales. The SPURS-1 campaign involved a series of 5 cruises during 2012 - 2013 seeking to characterize the salinity structure and balance in a high salinity, high evaporation, and low rainfall region of the subtropical North Atlantic. It aims to resolve processes responsible for maintaining the subtropical surface salinity maximum in this region and within a 900 x 800-mile square study area centered at 25N, 38W. CTD (Conductivity, Temperature, Depth) profilers were deployed at stations on each of the 5 SPURS-1 cruises. These shipboard lowered CTD probes provide continuous conductivity, salinity, and temperature vertical profile observations at fixed sampling locations. There were 100, 52, 17, 22 and 94 CTD casts made during the Knorr, Endeavor-1, Endeavor-2, Sarmiento, and Thalassa cruises respectively. All CTD data were calibrated using shipboard salinometers using IAPSO standard seawater. SPURS-1 shipboard CTD data files (one per cruise) contain the observational data processed to 1 meter bin depth intervals.

The SPURS (Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study) project is a NASA-funded oceanographic process study and associated field program that aim to elucidate key mechanisms responsible for near-surface salinity variations in the oceans. The project is comprised of two field campaigns and a series of cruises in regions of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans exhibiting salinity extremes. 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. The SPURS-2 campaign involved two month-long cruises by the R/V Revelle in August 2016 and October 2017 combined with complementary sampling on a more continuous basis over this period by the schooner Lady Amber. Focused around a central mooring located near 10N,125W, the objective of SPURS-2 was to study the dynamics of the rainfall-dominated surface ocean at the western edge of the eastern Pacific fresh pool subject to high seasonal variability and strong zonal flows associated with the North Equatorial Current and Countercurrent. A ship mast meteorological sensor package with an additional set of sophisticated sensors, including a direct covariance flux package was set up on both SPURS-2 Revelle cruises. These provided georeferenced, along-track atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity, IR/visible radiation, rain, and wind speed and air-sea flux measurements. Resulting data are packaged in netCDF files (one per cruise) with standards compliant metadata.

The SPURS (Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study) project is an oceanographic process study and associated field program that aim to elucidate key mechanisms responsible for near-surface salinity variations in the oceans. The project involves two field campaigns and a series of cruises in regions of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans exhibiting salinity extremes. 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 and SMOS satellites, provide a detailed characterization of salinity structure over a continuum of spatio-temporal scales. The SPURS-1 campaign involved a series of 5 cruises during 2012 - 2013 seeking to characterize the salinity structure and balance in a high salinity, high evaporation, and low rainfall region of the subtropical North Atlantic. It aims to resolve processes responsible for maintaining the subtropical surface salinity maximum in this region and within a 900 x 800-mile square study area centered at 25N, 38W. CTD (Conductivity, Temperature, Depth) profilers were deployed at stations on each of the 5 SPURS-1 cruises. These shipboard lowered CTD probes provide continuous conductivity, salinity, and temperature vertical profile observations at fixed sampling locations. There were 100, 52, 17, 22 and 94 CTD casts made during the Knorr, Endeavor-1, Endeavor-2, Sarmiento, and Thalassa cruises respectively. All CTD data were calibrated using shipboard salinometers using IAPSO standard seawater. SPURS-1 shipboard CTD data files (one per cruise) contain the observational data processed to 1 meter bin depth intervals.

The SPURS (Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study) project is an oceanographic process study and associated field program that aim to elucidate key mechanisms responsible for near-surface salinity variations in the oceans. The project involves two field campaigns and a series of cruises in regions of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans exhibiting salinity extremes. 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 and SMOS satellites, provide a detailed characterization of salinity structure over a continuum of spatio-temporal scales. The SPURS-1 campaign involved a series of 5 cruises during 2012 - 2013 seeking to characterize the salinity structure and balance in a high salinity, high evaporation, and low rainfall region of the subtropical North Atlantic. It aims to resolve processes responsible for maintaining the subtropical surface salinity maximum in this region and within a 900 x 800-mile square study area centered at 25N, 38W. Part of the Argo global network of autonomous, self-reporting samplers, Argo floats drift horizontally and move vertically through the water column generally on 10 day cycles, collecting high-quality temperature, conductivity and salinity depth profiles from the upper 2000m. Approximately 24 floats were deployed during SPURS-1 within the campaign domain, mainly during the Knorr cruise (6 Sept-9 Oct,2012). These were standard Argo floats with the addition of surface temperature and salinity (STS) sensors and acoustic rain gauges (PAL). Data accessible here only include the standard ARGO profiles, not the STS or PAL data. SPURS-1 ARGO data files are oganized per float and each contain profile trajectory series of conductivity, salinity, temperature, pressure, depth observations.

The SPURS (Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study) project is an oceanographic process study and associated field program that aim to elucidate key mechanisms responsible for near-surface salinity variations in the oceans. The project involves two field campaigns and a series of cruises in regions of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans exhibiting salinity extremes. 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 and SMOS satellites, provide a detailed characterization of salinity structure over a continuum of spatio-temporal scales. The SPURS-1 campaign involved a series of 5 cruises during 2012 - 2013 seeking to characterize the salinity structure and balance in a high salinity, high evaporation, and low rainfall region of the subtropical North Atlantic. It aims to resolve processes responsible for maintaining the subtropical surface salinity maximum in this region and within a 900 x 800-mile square study area centered at 25N, 38W. Approximately 83 drifters were deployed during the SPURS-1 campaign. A drifter is a passive Lagrangian sensor platform consisting of a surface buoy and tethered subsurface drogue. Drifter buoys contain GPS/ARGOS and satellite data transmitters, with sensors measuring temperature and other properties. For SPURS-1, these were standard Surface Velocity Program (SVP) drifters with salinity sensors added (SVP/S). Data for both US and European drifter deployments during SPURS-1 are available here. For each series, drifter data have been aggregrated within single netCDF data filea with their corresponding drifter-IDs and associaciated near-surface salinity, temperaure georeferenced (GPS and ARGOS) trajectory series data.

The SPURS (Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study) project is a NASA-funded oceanographic process study and associated field program that aim to elucidate key mechanisms responsible for near-surface salinity variations in the oceans. The project is comprised of two field campaigns and a series of cruises in regions of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans exhibiting salinity extremes. 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. The SPURS-2 campaign involved two month-long cruises by the R/V Revelle in August 2016 and October 2017 combined with complementary sampling on a more continuous basis over this period by the schooner Lady Amber. Focused around a central mooring located near 10N,125W, the objective of SPURS-2 was to study the dynamics of the rainfall-dominated surface ocean at the western edge of the eastern Pacific fresh pool subject to high seasonal variability and strong zonal flows associated with the North Equatorial Current and Countercurrent. Part of the Argo global network of autonomous, self-reporting samplers, Argo floats drift horizontally and move vertically through the water column generally on 10 day cycles, collecting high-quality temperature, conductivity and salinity depth (CTD) profiles from the upper 2000m. Twenty five floats were deployed during SPURS-2 within the campaign spatial domain and time period, yielding approximately 1,893 profiles. These were standard Argo floats with the addition of acoustic rain gauges (PAL) in some cases. SPURS-2 ARGO data files are organized per float and profile with the vertical conductivity, salinity, temperature, pressure, depth observations per the netCDF ARGO file specification with some augmented global metadata attributes.