A novel hydrographic gridded data set for the Northern Antarctic Peninsula

• Main Authors: Dotto, Tiago S., Mata, Mauricio M., Kerr, Rodrigo, Garcia, Carlos A. E.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: Antarctic; Antarctic Peninsula; Southern Ocean; Weddell; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2020-244; https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2020-244/

The Northern Antarctic Peninsula (NAP) is a highly dynamic transitional zone between the subpolar-polar and oceanic-coastal environments, and it is located in an area affected by intense climate change, including intensification and spatial shifts of the westerlies as well as atmospheric and oceanic warming. In the NAP area, the water masses originate mainly from the Bellingshausen and Weddell Seas, which create a marked regional dichotomic thermohaline characteristic. Although the NAP area has relatively easy access when compared to other Southern Ocean environments, our understanding of the water masses distribution and the dynamical processes affecting the variability of the region is still limited. That limitation is closely linked to the sparse data coverage, as commonly is the case in most of the Southern Ocean environments. This work provides a novel three-dimensional high-resolution hydrographic gridded data set for the NAP, namely the GOAL gridded product. Hydrographic measurements from 2003–2019 have been optimally interpolated to produce maps of conservative temperature, absolute salinity, neutral density and dissolved oxygen at ~10 km spatial resolution and 114 depth levels. The water masses and oceanographic features in this regional gridded product are more accurate than other climatologies and state estimate products currently available. The data sets are available in netCDF format at https://www.goal.furg.br/producao-cientifica/supplements/203-goal-gridded-nap and at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3989548 (Dotto et al., 2020). The novel GOAL gridded product and comprehensive data sets presented here are a valuable tool to be used in studies addressing climatological changes in the unique NAP region since they provide accurate initial conditions for ocean models and improve the early 21st-century ocean mean-summer-state representation for that area.