National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration
United States Department of Commerce

Data Access

Data Access

Saildrone Data Availability

Realtime (transmitted) Saildrone data from TPOS missions are available from LAS, ERDDAP, and as direct NetCDF downloads, which leverage ERDDAP services. Pages describing each mode of access can be found below, as well as examples from LAS and ERDDAP.  

/ocs/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/sd1005_LAS_figure.png /ocs/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/sd1005_ERDDAP.png

    LAS Air Temperature (Mission 1, drone 1005)          ERDDAP Air Temperature (same data)

A full description of data accessibility through LAS (PMEL's Live Access Server) can be found on our LAS page.  Details of ERDDAP's data display and delivery can be found on our ERDDAP page.

OCS TPOS Direct Downloads

A list of downloadable NetCDF files from each mission and drone is available below. The primary met-ocean files were downloaded directly from ERDDAP, repackaged to an even time grid, rebuilt with light QC and metadata edits, and retitled. Quality control has included averaging data from high resolution files on a small subset of variables (2017 - 2019) and a more manual approach to eliminating outliers based on standard deviations, manual inspection, and thresholds since 2021. Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are being minted on these Saildrone data files, and are referenced below.

SD-PMEL-TPOS-2017-01:

SD-PMEL-TPOS-2018-01:

SD-PMEL-TPOS-2019-01:

SD-PMEL-TPOS-2021-01:

SD-PMEL-TPOS-2022-01:

SD-PMEL-TPOS-2023-01:

SD-PMEL-TPOS-2024-01:

Update Log

Saildrone data are periodically updated as new quality control issues are discovered or metadata changes are applied. The list below shows a record of updates performed.

  • October 12, 2021 -- Re-released data (2017 - 2019) and applied minor metadata corrections. All variables are now present in the direct downloads for the 2019 mission. With this update, missing realtime records were in-filled using averaged delayed-mode data for GPS, Wind, SWR, LWR, AT, RH, and the primary SST variable, with a data mode variable provided to distinguish between these sources. Data quality codes indicate where light, manual QC and/or gross error thresholds were applied to data spikes.
  • October 4, 2023 -- Released 2021 and 2022 files (1-min data)
  • October 2, 2024 -- Re-released 2019 files (1-min data) with metadata fix to longwave radiometer long_names suggested by L. McGeorge. 
  • February 20, 2025 -- Metadata updates to ADCP files (2017 - 2023) and 1-min files (2017 - 2022, plus 2023 SBE56 data) by E. Koukel and posted by N. Anderson.
  • March 31, 2025 -- Replaced (2021 - 2022) and posted (2023 - 2024) 1-min files, having applied light QC to remove outliers (updating the "qc_manual" attribute). Added the updated summary attribute to 2024 files. Posted 2024 merged 5-min ADCP data.
  • April 21, 2025 -- Re-released files (2017 - 2019) with minor metadata updates from E. Koukel ("qc_manual" attribute).
  • May 5, 2025 -- Re-released files (2017 - 2019) with metadata updates to include the dataset DOI, a doi_comment, and an update to the summary attribute that incorrectly stated the data QC level.
  • May 8, 2025 -- Re-released files (2021 - 2024) with metadata updates to correct some duplicated attributes, and remove references to raw data, including within the summary attribute.

Saildrone Carbon Data

Data collected by the PMEL Carbon Group on the OCS TPOS Saildrone missions are available on our Partner's Data webpage, or via this direct NCEI link. These data are recovered post-mission and require the application of quality control measures, so the most recent missions may not be available immediately.