Modeled daily temperature, salinity, surface elevation, and velocity fields from Navy Coastal Ocean Model (NCOM), Gulf of Mexico, 2018-01-01 to 2024-01-01

Data is from the Navy Coastal Ocean Model (NCOM) Version 4.3 (Martin et al., 2009). The model grid, 640 x 481, extends from 18°N to 31°N and 98°W to 79°W with a 3 km horizontal resolution on a spherical projection. In the vertical, there is a 35 layer terrain-following (free-sigma) grid on top of 15 z-levels, such that within the Loop Current region, the surface and bottom cells are approximately 0.5 and 500 m thick, respectively. All advection schemes are 2nd order, and no tidal forcing is prescribed. Open boundary conditions are specified by the global 1/12 degree 41-layer Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) with the Naval Research Lab Coupled Ocean Data Assimilation (NCODA) System, together known as the Global Ocean Forecasting System (GOFS) version 3.1 (Metzger et al., 2014). The model was initiated from the year 2018. Deep temperature and salinity fields were relaxed to the U.S. Navy Generalized Digital Environment Model (GDEM) version 3.0 (Carnes et al., 2010). Meteorological forcing is from the Navy Global Environmental Model (Hogan et al., 2014). The model integration is not run with data assimilation. Instead, our purpose is to illustrate the free-running dynamics that occur within the whole water column around the LC during its naturally occurring extension, detachment/reattachment, and separation cycle. The dataset consists of daily snapshots at midnight from 2018-01-01 to 2024-01-01.