Ocean current, temperature, salinity and turbulence collected from the R/V Walton Smith, R/V Pelican, and R/V Pt. Sur during two summer seasons of intensive field campaigns in the Coastal Waters of Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico from 20210620 to 20220707

Recently, theories for ocean dynamics posit that submesoscale flows interacting with near-inertial motions are important for understanding the dynamics of both phenomena. These data provide a basis to test theories of energy exchange at the submesoscale by studying circulation patterns in the Mississippi-Atchafalaya river plume in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Observations from ship, moorings, and autonomous platforms made during two field campaigns are complemented by hydrostatic ROMS modeling and non-hydrostatic Large Eddy Simulations (LES). By combining data and models, we characterize, quantify, and understand the energy exchanges between balanced and unbalanced motions and the turbulent cascade that can result from the interaction. Wave-mean flow interactions in the Mississippi-Atchafalaya river plume system could enhance mixing and vertical exchange, which are important for understanding coastal hypoxia and the dispersal of pollutants in the northern Gulf of Mexico. The data archiv..., , # Ocean current, temperature, salinity, and turbulence collected from the R/V Walton Smith, R/V Pelican, and R/V Pt. Sur during two summer seasons of intensive field campaigns in the Coastal Waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico from 20210620 to 20220707

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.tdz08kqbr](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.tdz08kqbr)

## Description of the data and file structure

Data is from a Vertical Microstructure profiler. There is a readme in each subfile with details on the variables. Data that is listed as \"NaN\" has been removed by our quality control algorithms. 

### Files and variables

#### File: VMP.zip

**Description:** Each of these zip files contains 2 directories, one for the 2021 field season and one for the 2022 field season. Within each there are data files (netcdf) and metadata files (text, with corresponding filenames)

## Code/software

Data is in standard netcdf format. Each file is accompanied by a readme with additional information.

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