The SPURS (Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study) project is 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 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, 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. 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 point current meters providing continuous series of temperature, salinity and current profile data. Meteorological observations included wind speed, air temperature, precipitation, and radiative flux. The mooring was deployed in 4769 m depth of water on 24 August 2016, at N10:03.0481, W125:01.939, and was recovered on November 11, 2017. WHOI mooring netCDF 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 Ecomapper or IVER is a portable autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) capable carrying a range of sensor payloads. For SPURS-1 these included CTD, chlorophyll, oxygen and turbidity sensors. Ecomapper was deployed on two days during the Knorr cruise, 29 and 30 September 2012. The resulting Knorr Ecomapper data files include deployment event information and contain trajectory-depth profile series of chlorophyll, turbidity, oxygen, conductivity, with salinity, and temperature observations from two sensors.

The SWOT Postlaunch Oceanography Field Campaign Shipboard CTD and Water Sample Data collection provides the conductivity, temperature and depth (CTD) measurements and water sample measurements from shipboard instruments deployed by the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) postlaunch field campaign. The SWOT satellite mission launched in late 2022 and underwent a calibration and validation (cal/val) phase in 2023. As part of cal/val, an array of oceanographic instruments was deployed at a site 300 km offshore of California. Shipboard data come from four research cruises on the Bold Horizon and the Sally Ride, with different time spans ranging from February 23, 2023 to November 2, 2024. These measurements were used to adjust the calibrations of mooring CTD sensors (deployed in the same field campaign) to a common and well-calibrated reference, to enable the calculation of steric height for SWOT cal/val analyses. Most, but not all of the CTD casts were collected at the actual mooring sites. For some casts, mooring instruments were attached temporarily to the ship CTD system for cross-calibration, and these may have been done anywhere en route to/from the mooring sites. Due to the varying depth ratings of the mooring instruments thus attached, not all CTD casts covered the full water column. The resulting CTD data collection is an irregular pattern of sampling locations and depths, which includes a number of full-depth casts in the vicinity of the moorings.

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 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. Two saildrones were deployed over a month period during the second SPURS-2 R/V Revelle cruise in 2017. Saildrone is a state-of-the-art, remotely guided, wind and solar powered unmanned surface vehicle (USV) capable of long distance deployments lasting up to 12 months. It is equipped with a suite of instruments and sensors providing high quality, georeferenced, near real-time, multi-parameter surface ocean and atmospheric observations while transiting at typical speeds of 3-5 knots. Saildrone data files are in netCDF format and CF/ACDD/NCEI compliant. They contain the saildrone platform telemetry and near-surface observational data (air temperature, sea surface skin and bulk temperatures, salinity, oxygen and chlorophyll-a concentrations, barometric pressure, wind speed and direction) for the entire cruise at 1 minute temporal resolution.

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. A Waveglider is an autonomous platform propelled by the conversion of ocean wave energy into forward thrust and employing solar panels to power instrumentation. During SPURS-1, three wavegliders (ASL2, ASL3 and ASL4) were deployed from the Knorr in September 2012, redeployed in April 2013 (ASL22, ASL32 and ASL42) with final recovery in September. Waveglider trajectories followed a square loop or butterfly pattern around the central SPURS mooring. Sensors included a CTD at the near-surface and another at 6 m depth, a surface current meter, air temperature, atmospheric pressure and wind speed sensors providing continuous along-track observations. NetCDF waveglider data files here contain hour averaged, georeferenced trajectory data for those parameters and depths.

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. All US SPURS-1 cruises (Knorr: 6 Sept-9 Oct 2012; Endeavor: 15 Mar-15 Apr 2013 and 19 Sep-13 Oct 2013) were equipped with a ship mast meteorological sensor package. An additional set of sophisticated meteorological sensors, including a direct covariance flux package, was installed on the Knorr. These sensors provided along-track atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity, IR/visible radiation, rain, wind speed and direct covariance flux measurements. Resulting data files (1 per cruise) contain these georeferenced, SPURS-1 research vessel-based meteorological measurements.

The Salinity and Stratification at the Sea Ice Edge (SASSIE) project is a NASA experiment that aims to understand how salinity anomalies in the upper ocean generated by melting sea ice affect sea surface temperature (SST), stratification, and subsequent sea-ice growth. SASSIE involved a field campaign that sampled the transition from summer melt to autumn ice advance in the Beaufort Sea during August-October 2022, making intensive in situ and remote sensing observations within ~200 km of the sea ice edge. This dataset contains profiles of upper ocean temperature, salinity, and density taken with a Shipboard CastAway Conductivity-Temperature-Depth instrument (CastAway-CTD). A total of 254 profiles were taken over the sampling period at various locations, typically every 30 minutes while the ship was underway, with a mean depth of 45m. Data are available in NetCDF format.

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.