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SPURS-2 Passive Accoustic Listener (PAL) data from ARGO float deployments during the E. Tropical Pacific field campaign

Published by SPURS Project;NASA/JPL/PODAAC | National Aeronautics and Space Administration | Metadata Last Checked: October 28, 2025 | Last Modified: 2025-09-11
The SPURS (Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study) project is a NASA-funded oceanographic process study and associated field program that aim to elucidate key mechanisms responsible for near-surface salinity variations in the oceans. The project is comprised of two field campaigns and a series of cruises in regions of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans exhibiting salinity extremes. SPURS employs a suite of state-of-the-art in-situ sampling technologies that, combined with remotely sensed salinity fields from the Aquarius/SAC-D, SMAP and SMOS satellites, provide a detailed characterization of salinity structure over a continuum of spatio-temporal scales. The SPURS-2 campaign involved two month-long cruises by the R/V Revelle in August 2016 and October 2017 combined with complementary sampling on a more continuous basis over this period by the schooner Lady Amber. Focused around a central mooring located near 10N,125W, the objective of SPURS-2 was to study the dynamics of the rainfall-dominated surface ocean at the western edge of the eastern Pacific fresh pool subject to high seasonal variability and strong zonal flows associated with the North Equatorial Current and Countercurrent. Part of the Argo global network of autonomous, self-reporting samplers, Argo floats drift horizontally and move vertically through the water column generally on 10 day cycles, collecting high-quality temperature, conductivity and salinity depth (CTD) profiles from the upper 2000m. Four of the Twenty five floats deployed during SPURS-2 within the campaign spatial domain and time period were additionally equipped with acoustic rain gauges (PAL - Passive Acoustic Listeners). SPURS-2 ARGO-PAL data files are in netCDF/CF-compliant data format and organized per float. Float identifiers associated with ARGO CTD data are referenced in the metadata of the related PAL files.

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