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Saildrone Baja field campaign surface and ADCP measurements

Metadata Updated: September 18, 2025

Saildrone is a wind and solar powered unmanned surface vehicle (USV) capable of long distance deployments lasting up to 12 months and providing high quality, near real-time, multivariate surface ocean and atmospheric observations while transiting at typical speeds of 3-5 knots. The drone is autonomous in that it may be guided remotely from land while being completely wind driven. The saildrone Baja campaign was a 60-day cruise from San Francisco Bay, down along the US/Mexico coast to Guadalupe Island and back again over the period 11 April 2018 to 11 June 2018. Repeat surveys were taken around NDBC moored buoys, and during the final week of the cruise a targeted front was sampled. Scientific objectives included studies of upwelling and frontal region dynamics, air-sea interactions, and diurnal warming effects, while its validation objectives included establishing the utility of data from the saildrone platform for assessment of satellite data accuracy and model assimilation. During the Baja campaign, the single deployed saildrone was equipped with a suite of instruments that included a CTD, IR pyrometer, fluorometer, dissolved oxygen sensor, anemometer, barometer, and Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP). Additionally, four temperature data loggers were positioned vertically along hull to provide further information on thermal variability near the ocean surface.This Saildrone Baja dataset is comprised of one data file with 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. A second file contains the ADCP current vector data that is depth-resolved to 100m at 2m intervals and binned temporally at 5 minute resolution. All data files are in netCDF format and CF/ACDD compliant consistent with the NOAA/NCEI specification.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 18, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 18, 2025
Publisher Saildrone;NASA/JPL/PODAAC
Maintainer
Identifier 10.5067/SDRON-SURF0
Data Last Modified 2025-09-11
Category Earth Science
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 1f666b99-3732-413d-8f53-f37c9101abdb
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/CitingPODAAC
Old Spatial "CARTESIAN",{"WestBoundingCoordinate":-125.55,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":28.01,"EastBoundingCoordinate":-115.52,"NorthBoundingCoordinate":37.82}
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 52b309ee7a601bad4fe196836a83b906aa040c365d1f3735230f47dd3b85bc77
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial
Temporal 2018-04-11/2018-04-11

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