Abstract
This dataset consists of a census of warm core ring formation locations, times, and sizes from the Gulf Stream between 2018 and 2023. This work builds upon the following dataset:
Gangopadhyay, A., Gawarkiewicz, G. (2020) Yearly census of Gulf Stream Warm Core Ring formation from 1980 to 2017. Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO). (Version 1) Version Date 2020-05-06 [if applicable, indicate subset used]. doi:10.26008/1912/bco-dmo.810182.1 [access date]
In addition, it is related to two additional datasets containing warm core ring weekly tracking data:
(i) Warm Core Ring trajectory information from 2011 to 2020 -- Silver et al. (2022a) (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6436380).
(ii) Warm Core Ring Trajectories in the Northwest Atlantic Slope Sea (2021-2023) – Porter et al. (2024) (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10392322)
The format of this data set is similar to the datasets mentioned above, and the following description is adapted from those. This dataset contains a yearly census of Gulf Stream Warm Core Ring formation from 2018 to 2023. This continuous census file contains the formation and demise times and locations, and the area at formation for warm core rings that lived a week or more. Each row represents a unique Warm Core Ring and is identified by a unique alphanumeric code 'WEyyyymmddA', where 'WE' represents a Warm Eddy (as identified in the analysis charts); 'yyyymmdd' is the year, month and day of formation; and the last character 'A' represents the sequential sighting of the eddies in a particular year. For example, the first ring formed in 2018, having a trailing alphabet of 'G', indicates that six rings were carried over from 2017, which are still observed on January 1, 2018.
Creating the WCR tracking dataset follows the same methodology as the previously generated WCR census (Gangopadhyay et al., 2019, 2020). This census was created from Jenifer Clark’s Gulf Stream Charts. These charts show the location, extent, and temperature signature of currents (GS, shelf-slope front), warm and cold-core rings (WCRs and CCRs), other eddies, shingles, intrusions, and other water mass boundaries in the Gulf of Maine, over Georges Bank, and in the Middle Atlantic Bight. An example chart is shown in Figure 1a of Gangopadhyay et al. (2019). A year-long animation for these charts for 2017 is presented in the supporting information of Gangopadhyay et al. (2020) https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2019JC016033. The charts are generated 2-3 times a week from 2018 to 2023. Thus, we used approximately 624+ Charts for the 6 years of analysis. These charts were then reanalyzed between 75°W and 55°W using QGIS 2.18.16 (2016) and geo-referenced on a WGS84 coordinate system (Decker, 1986).