Yearly census of Gulf Stream Warm Core Ring formation from 1980 to 2017

Abstract

Yearly census of Gulf Stream Warm Core Ring formation from 1980 to 2017. This continuous census file contains the formation and demise times and locations, and the area at formation for all 961 WCRs formed between 1980 and 2017 that lived for 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 in 2017 having a trailing alphabet of 'E' indicates that four rings were carried over from 2016 which are still observed on January 1, 2017.

For a complete list of measurements, refer to the full dataset description in the supplemental file 'Dataset_description.pdf'. The most current version of this dataset is available at: https://www.bco-dmo.org/dataset/810182