CARTHE drifters deployment within the DDR20 - "Drifter demonstration and Research 2020" experiment in the NW Mediterranean Sea

A cluster of 20 CARTHE-type drifters were deployed in the open sea area in front of Livorno (Italy) on October 8, 2020. The deployment was part of the DDR20- "Drifter demonstration and Research 2020" experiment performed in collaboration with the CMRE-NATO and Consorzio LaMMA, and supported by many EU projects, such as SICOMAR plus, JERICO-S3, SINAPSI, and IMPACT. CARTHE-type drifters are biodegradable drifters, spanning the first 60cm of the water column (Novelli 2017, 2018, 2020). The deployment strategy consisted of releasing drifters on a regular grid (about 3km side and 500m step) in a time window of about 2 hours. 5 drifters heading south were collected on October 10, 2020 and re-deployed, on the same day, approx. 2.5 nm to the north of the initial deployment area. 3 stranded drifters were redeployed on November 11, 2020 in the open sea area in front of the La Spezia Gulf. Each file contains a drifter trajectory in the NetCDF format (ex: 001.nc, 002.nc, etc...). Trajectories of those drifters that were collected and re-deployed are splitted in different files (ex: 001_a.nc, 001_b.nc). Nominal drifter transmission rate: 10 minutes. Positions available until January 23, 2021. The dataset includes raw positions; outliers were removed. References: • Novelli, G., C.M. Guigand, C. Cousin, E. Ryan, N. Laxague, H. Dai, B. Haus, and T.M. Özgökmen (2017). A biodegradable surface drifter for ocean sampling on a massive scale. J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol., 34(11), 2509-2532. • Novelli, G., C.M. Guigand, T.M. Özgökmen (2018). Technological Advances in Drifters for Oil Transport Studies. Marine Technology Society Journal, 52(6), 53-61. • Novelli, G, C.M. Guigand, M. Boufadel, T.M. Özgökmen (2020). On the transport and landfall of marine oil spills, laboratory and field observations. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 150, 110805. • http://interreg-maritime.eu/web/sicomarplus • https://www.jerico-ri.eu/ • http://interreg-maritime.eu/web/sinapsi • http://interreg-maritime.eu/web/impact