The OOI Ocean Data Lab Project

The National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) is advancing our ability to understand the natural world by collecting large quantities of data to address complex oceanographic processes. This expanded access to data also provides professors in the geosciences with new opportunities to engage undergraduate students in authentic data experiences using real-world data sets to teach geoscience processes.

However, students struggle to work with data based on their limited experience and exposure to different data types and sources. Also, supporting students in engaging with the data can be challenging for professors too, as there is a lack of adequate tools to easily digest and manipulate large data sets for in-class learning experiences.

Therefore, the OOI Ocean Data Lab Project (formerly called Data Explorations), with funding from NSF, is developing, testing, refining, and disseminating easy to use, interactive Data Explorations and Data Lab Notebooks that will allow undergraduates to use authentic data in accessible ways while being easy for professors to integrate into their teaching.

Recent Blog Posts

Data Labs at the OOI Facilities Board

Earlier this month, Janice and I presented an update on the Data Labs project to the OOI Facilities Board during their (virtual) spring meeting. It's always nice to have an opportunity to reflect on your accomplishments. It's been almost…
Axial Base Shallow Profiler Mooring - CTD

Identifying Dataset Sample Rates

Today's example is rather simple, but it answers a common question I've heard... What is the sample rate of my dataset? For many ocean observatory datasets, the rates are usually pretty well defined and constant in time. For example,…
CTD data from OOI Station Papa Flanking Mooring B

Merging Datasets For the Win (and export)

If you find yourself with multiple datasets that you need to analyze or plot together, you will probably need to merge them. A merged dataset is handy because all of the data points line up with the same index or timestamp, which allows…

Access the Ocean with OOI

Have you been looking for a good (and quick) video introduction of the OOI to show your students? In case you haven't seen this video yet, it's a nice option to consider. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U8uXLefjIk&t=28s This video,…
Air and seawater temperatures along with salinity at the Pioneer Central Surface Mooring (CP01CNSM) for 2019 and early 2020.

Data requests the easy way with the OOI API

Welcome back to Python Tuesday! The OOI dataset is not exactly the easiest dataset to work with. But a significant reason for this is that the dataset contains over a thousand individual instruments in the system and 36 different instrument…
Seasonal cycle of sea surface temperatures at NDBC Station 44025 in the Mid-Atlantic
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Seasonal Cycle and Anomaly at NDBC 44025

The Mid Atlantic has one of the largest summer to winter changes of sea surface temperature in the world. But you don't have to take my word for this, we can use real data to see how large the change is! In last week's example notebook,…