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PacWave Site Observations

Metadata Updated: March 24, 2026

The PacWave Site Observations submission contains raw and near-real-time meteorological and oceanic measurements at the PacWave wave energy test site. PacWave is an open-ocean testing facility operated by Oregon State University, located off the coast of Newport, Oregon. The test site is split into two areas, aptly named PacWave North (PWN) and PacWave South (PWS). PWN is an off-grid test site located 2 nm offshore with a water depth of 45-55 m, located between 44.68 & 44.70 degrees North and 124.12 & 124.15 degrees West. PWS is a grid-connected test site located 6 nm offshore with a water depth of 65-78 m, located between 44.55 & 44.58 degrees North and 124.21 & 124.24 degrees West.

There are several METocean instrumentation platforms that have been deployed at both sites: - FLOATr (Fixed Location Ocean and Atmosphere Tracking) buoys - Sofar Spotter wave buoys - CDIP WaveRider buoys - Nexsens meteorological buoys - Nortek Signature250 bottom lander - CRAB passive acoustic monitoring system

These platforms have been deployed at both sites with varying deployment schedules. Deployments are typically named with a 3 digit number in chronological order. Processed data are provided in netCDF4 format based on Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) standards. Note, minimal quality control has been conducted on these data.

The FLOATr buoys provide meteorological measurements of wind speed and direction, air temperature and pressure, shortwave radiation (light). An onboard CTD (conductivity-temperature-depth) sensor (Seabird SBE 37-SM MicroCAT) provides measurements of water temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen. Down-looking ADCPs (RDI Workhorse 600 kHz) installed on the FLOATr buoys provide observations of water velocity.

Telemetered data from the FLOATr buoys are stored in CSV files with the following filenames: - ADCP.dat (subsampling of ADCP binary data - Teledyne Sentinel Workhorse 300khz) - Airmar_buffer.dat (Airmar WX200 instrument serial data buffer) - gga.dat (gps Degree & Decimal Minutes) - hdg.dat (magnetic heading, deviation, variation) - hdt.dat (heading true) - mda.dat (meteorological composite) - Met.dat (multiple data values from various sources (instruments, nmea strings) into a single data table) - best for quick data checks - mwv_r.dat (calculated mean wind velocity_relative) - mwv_t.dat (calculated mean wind velocity_true) - Ocean.dat (CTD data - Seabird SBE16, temp, conductivity/salinity, 02) - zda.dat - (time and date)

The wave buoys (Spotter, Nexsens, WaveRider) provide measurements of standard and directional wave statistics as well as additional metocean variables such as sea surface temperature. Telemetered wave statistics are stored in .json format, as pulled from the cloud APIs, and are processed into netCDF4 format. Raw data from the Spotter SD cards is uploaded after each deployment recovery in a netCDF4 format. Data from the WaveRider buoys can be found on the UCSD CDIP website.

Bottom deployments of Nortek Signature250 ADCPs are deployed in dual profile mode, measuring both surface waves and water velocity. Data are collected only after recovery of the bottom lander, typically every 6 months. These data are provided in the raw native ADCP format (.ad2cp and .avgd.ad2cp). NetCDF4 files containing the surface elevation measurements are created from the larger .ad2cp file, which can be then used to calculate wave statistics, while netCDF4 files containing water velocity are created from the .avgd.ad2cp file.

The Coastal Real-time Acoustic Buoy (CRAB) is a passive acoustic instrumentation system that collects passive acoustic measurements on the seafloor and telemeters data on-shore in near-real-time. The hydrophones are controlled via a WISPR system onboard the bottom lander, which sends data to the surface buoy at a specified interval to send to a shore-side server. Raw acoustic pressure data are stored in .dat files in the native WISPR format, and processed netCDF4 files contain calibrated sound pressure spectral density level and sound pressure levels.

Processed and Raw data can be accessed via the "PacWave Observation Data on AWS" resource below. For links to specific datasets see the "PacWave Data Structure Table" resource.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: Creative Commons Attribution

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date May 20, 2025
Metadata Updated Date March 24, 2026

Metadata Source

Harvested from OpenEI data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date May 20, 2025
Metadata Updated Date March 24, 2026
Publisher Oregon State University
Maintainer
Identifier https://data.openei.org/submissions/8417
Data First Published 2020-01-01T07:00:00Z
Data Last Modified 2026-03-23T14:17:07Z
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 019:20
Metadata Context https://openei.org/data.json
Metadata Catalog ID https://openei.org/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Data Quality True
Harvest Object Id 6b131441-9663-4fa6-ab74-5337b62d101b
Harvest Source Id 7cbf9085-0290-4e9f-bec1-91653baeddfd
Harvest Source Title OpenEI data.json
Homepage URL https://mhkdr.openei.org/submissions/596
License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Old Spatial {"type":"Polygon","coordinates":-180,-83,180,-83,180,83,-180,83,-180,-83}
Program Code 019:009
Projectlead Lauren Ruedy
Projectnumber FY25 AOP 2.4.1.601
Projecttitle Portal and Repository for Information on Marine Renewable Energy (PRIMRE)
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 31a1e15ba025f0f3b4331666a66206f00ab533fe671ff68c4b309dd25e839d16
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type":"Polygon","coordinates":-180,-83,180,-83,180,83,-180,83,-180,-83}

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