Data Sources for the OOI Lab Manual (2nd Edition)
This lab manual features a variety of datasets from the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), allowing you to interact with authentic data from the ocean as you explore oceanographic topics. This page outlines where these datasets came from – the instruments used and the locations where the datasets were obtained – as well as how they were processed for use in these labs. A number of the labs include Python notebooks showing how you can download and process the data yourself.
Lab 2 – Building Data Skills
Lab 2.1 features 1 year of timeseries data from the Coastal Pioneer Array Offshore Surface Mooring (CP04OSSM) Bulk Meteorological Sensor (METBK). The python notebook demonstrates how the data was processed into hourly, daily and monthly averages.
Lab 2.4 includes two interactive temperature profiles from Coastal Pioneer (CP02PMCI) and Irminger Sea (GI02HYPM), collected on August 18, 2018. These datasets were downloaded from the OOI Data Portal directly as CSV files, and then a single profile was extracted for each. Note, the Irminger Sea profiler starts at 168m and goes down to 2,506m. In order to include a representation of the surface layer, an additional data point from a nearby fixed CTD at 12m was added.
Lab 3 – Geology: Plate Tectonics
This lab features earthquake data obtained from the USGS Earthquake Portal. A custom search was used to find all quakes greater than 2.5 magnitude, in the selected region (40.0563333°N, 131.1226°W to 48.5676667°N, 124.6731667°W), from 2010 to the present day (2021-07-12). Earthquakes with negative depth were removed. (earthquake datafile)
The volcanoes included in this activity were extracted from the NCEI Volcano Location Database, NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. (volcano datafile)
Lab 4 – Geology: Sea Floor Changes
This lab includes data from the Bottom Pressure and Tilt instrument (RS03CCAL-MJ03F-05-BOTPTA301) at the Cabled Axial Seamount Central Caldera. The processed data for this instrument was provided by William Chadwick at NOAA PMEL, and was adapted from Figure 2 in: Nooner, S. L., and W. W. Chadwick, Jr. (2016), Inflation-predictable behavior and co-diking-eruption event deformation at Axial Seamount, Science, 354(6318), 1399-1403, doi:10.1126/science.aah4666. To see the latest data from this instrument, you can visit the PMEL Axial Seamount real-time data site.
The volcano earthquake data used in this activity is from: Wilcock, W., Waldhauser, F., & Tolstoy, M. (2016). Catalogs of earthquake recorded on Axial Seamount from January, 2015 through November, 2015 (investigators William Wilcock, Maya Tolstoy, Felix Waldhauser). Integrated Earth Data Applications (IEDA). https://doi.org/10.1594/ieda/323843. The earthquake catalog data are publicly available in the Marine Geoscience Data System. The activity uses data from the Axial_DD_n12.dat data file. To learn more about this diking-eruptive event, see Wilcock, W., M. Tolstoy, F. Waldhauser, C. Garcia1, Y. Joe Tan, D. Bohnenstiehl, J. Caplan-Auerbach, R. Dziak, A. Arnulf, and M. Mann. (2016) Seismic constraints on caldera dynamics from the 2015 Axial Seamount eruption. Science. 354(6318): 1395-1399. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aah5563. For more recent data, you can find real-time maps and downloadable data files on William Wilcock’s Axial Seamount Earthquake Catalog site.
Lab 5 – Ocean Chemistry
Lab 5.3 features data from the following CTD instruments:
- Coastal Pioneer Offshore Profiler Mooring (CP04OSPM-WFP01-03-CTDPFK000 telemetered) from 2019-01-01 to 2019-12-31.
- Global Argentine Apex Profiler Mooring (GA02HYPM-WFP02-04-CTDPFL000 recovered_wfp) from 2015-04-01 to 2016-03-31. Because the Argentine profiler mooring starts at around 310m, in order to fill in the surface layer a bunch of fixed CTDs from the Apex Surface Mooring were also included.
One of the key goals of this lab was to show representative profiles of CTD data over the course of a year. For simplicity in processing, and clarity in the final dataset, we have chosen to create monthly averaged profiles, by binning profile data from specified depth ranges over each month for a representative year. Data for the Pioneer profiler were binned to every 10m. Because the Argentine profiler had to be supplemented with fixed CTDs in the upper layer, data for this area were binned to every 10m from 0-250m, and then every 5m from 250-2630m. For details, see the python notebook.
Lab 5.1 uses the same dataset, but simply shows 2 selected monthly profiles from the Pioneer profiler.
Lab 5.4 uses the same raw dataset from the Pioneer profiler as well, however the monthly profiles are binned to every 2m to show more variability in the vertical structure. This notebook is more straightforward than the above example, and is a good place to start if you’re interested in analyzing profiler data and creating time/depth bin averaged profiles.
Lab 5.2 features timeseries data from 2 fixed depth CTDs.
- 7m at Coastal Pioneer Offshore Surface Mooring (CP04OSSM-RID27-03-CTDBPC000)
- 30m at Irminger Sea Flanking Mooring A (GI03FLMA-RIM01-02-CTDMOG040)
One year of data was downloaded (from 2018-01-01 to 2019-01-01), outliers removed, and then averaged into daily mean values. Density was then calculated 3 different ways for each CTD.
- Using the measured temperature and salinity (as calculated by the instrument).
- Using only salinity, while holding temperature constant using the mean temperature from the record
- Using only temperature, while holding salinity constant using the mean salinity from the record
For details, see the python notebook.
Lab 6 – Ocean Physics
The dataset used in this lab is from the Bulk Meteorology and Surface Wave Spectra instruments at the Coastal Pioneer Central Surface Mooring (CP01CNSM). For details, check out the Python notebook.
Lab 7 – Primary Production
This lab includes data from several instruments on the Coastal Pioneer array. Different sites and instruments were used in order to get the most data coverage over the 4 years of interest, but they are close enough to suffice for the purposes of this lab. For more details on how the data were processed, check out the Python notebook.
Lab 8 – Anoxic Events
This lab uses temperature and dissolved oxygen collected from the seafloor (at 25m depth) from the Oregon Inshore Surface Mooring site. Wind speeds from the nearby Oregon Shelf Surface Mooring are also used. For details, check out the Python notebook.
