Summary: | Between 1985 and 1994, the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington deployed 24 ARGOS data buoys in ice floes on the Arctic Ocean, from which six temperature and conductivity sensor pairs were suspended as deep as 300 meters to allow calculation of salinity and density. Each sensor was sampled into a circular buffer every 12 minutes; one sample was transmitted every minute and the polar region coverage by ARGOS satellites provided sufficient redundancy to ensure that nearly every data point would get through. Subjected to all the stresses and strains of Arctic pack ice, these buoys varied greatly in their longevity, but the result is a substantial hydrographic record of the Arctic Ocean for a decade. The data is available here in an ASCII file of the original 12-minute samples. An ARGOS position fix is calculated once for each satellite pass, so latitude and longitude are interpolated to the time of each sample. Only some sensor levels, always including the bottom, were provided with pressure sensors to directly measure the depth. Depths of intervening layers were calculated from a catenary model of the cable hanging beneath the buoy hull. Each "hydrofile", for example Hydro.12795.1093, contains one month of data.
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