Lagrangian Submesoscale Experiment (LASER) Surface Velocity Program (SVP) drifters, January - June 2016, Gulf of Mexico

The LASER experiment took place in the area around the DeSoto Canyon in the Northeastern Gulf of Mexico in January - February 2016. Its core component was the release of > 1000 CARTHE-type drifters, drogued at ~50 cm depth. (See the related datasets R4.x265.237:0001, R4.x265.000:0027, and R4.x265.000:0044 at GRIIDC.) In addition, drift cards (R4.x265.237:0004) and Lagrangian floats (R4.x265.237:0008) were deployed, as well as many accompanying observations collected R4.x265.237:0005, R4.x265.237:0006, R4.x265.237:0007, R4.x265.237:0009, R4.x265.000:0028, and R4.x265.000:0050). This dataset contains the trajectories of 48 SVP drifters that were released during the LASER experiment. Some of these were equipped with barometers (SVPB), although pressure is not being reported. While some were drogued at the standard 15 m depth, others were released undrogued. In summary, the following drifters were deployed: 6 drogued SVP, 8 undrogued SVP, 5 drogued SVPB (5 of these had at most 1 record), and 29 undrogued SVPB (5 of these had at most 2 records). In addition to positions, sea surface temperature is also reported. No processing was performed on the data, except that pre-launch records were deleted. These drifters were part of the global drifter program, and interpolated data is therefore available from the GDP Drifter Data Assembly Center, hosted by NOAA's AOML (http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/dac/dacdata.php).