New global drifter data set available

Since 1978, oceanographers, meteorologists, and the U.S. Navy have deployed a large number of Argos satellite-tracked drifters in all of the major ocean basins (Table l). The Data Buoy Cooperation Panel (DBCP) of the World Meteorological Organization/Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (WMO/IOC) has coordinated the deployment of drifters via cooperative projects in various ocean basins. In any given month since 1993, there has been an array of more than 600 drifters in the global ocean (http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/dac/ dacdata.html). Most of the raw observations and processed data have been accumulating at the Meteorological and Environmental Data Service (MEDS), Canada. The raw data on file have been processed from MEDS, and other sources, and merged with the processed data at the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) to form a single file.