Processes that Change Salinity Exploration
Your Objective
Use water and atmospheric conditions (above the surface ocean) data across different time periods from the North Pacific Ocean to see if there are patterns.
- Make a prediction about how as salinity in the surface ocean changes, what changes in other aspects of the ocean and/or atmosphere you may observe.
- Explore the data below to see what you can observe.
Include Salinity?
Select the second parameter:
Data Tips
When the site loads, you are able to see the full dataset of salinity and air temperature data from the Oregon Shelf Surface Buoy in the Coastal Endurance Array. You can interact with the data by:
- Turning on and off different oceanic or atmospheric variables to compare their data to the salinity data.
- Zooming in and out of the data to look at different time scales that interest you by changing the width of the highlighted section of the bottom graph (it loads with all of the data highlighted).
Questions for Thought
- What oceanic or atmospheric variables can you look at in these graphs?
- Across what time periods are you able to observe oceanic or atmospheric variables in these graphs?
- What is the first month and year there are data?
- What is the last month and year there are data?
- What changes or patterns did you observe at the surface in other variables as salinity changes over this time period off of Oregon?
- When did you see these changes or patterns?
- What questions do you still have about what drives changes in salinity at the ocean surface over time?
Background Information
Click on the images below to learn more about where and how the dataset above was collected.
Dataset Information
The data for this activity was obtained from the following meteorological instrument:
- Coastal Endurance, Oregon Shelf Surface Mooring (CE02SHSM-SBD11-06-METBKA000)
The above datasets were downloaded from the OOI data portal, and then down-sampled to hourly intervals. The data presented are from the raw record, that is, they are instantaneous measurements that have not been averaged because that would smooth out the variability in the dataset.