Over 800,000 vertical profiles of Temperature and Salinity have been collected since 2004 in the World Ocean by attaching tags on marine mammals, such as Southern elephant seals.
In this website, you will find information about the marine mammal tagging programs, and an access point to the publicly available databases.
Please let us know if you are using our data. You can contact us by mail to info@meop.net if you have any question.
The MEOP data portal
Content of the website
Where to download the data
MEOP-CTD database (version 2024-03-08):
To explore the database content before downloading it, you can find a complete list of profiles, tags and deployments in the following files:
You can download the MEOP-CTD database here: MEOP-CTD_https://www.meop.net/meop-data/MEOP-CTD_2024-03-08_ALL.zip2024-03-08_ALL.zip
Note that the file is very large, so you might experience difficulties to download and/or uncompress it (especially on a Windows operating system). In that case, you can download a split version of the database with one file by national contributor given below.
Separate zip files for each national contribution are available here:
• Brazil
• Canada
• Chile
• China
• France
• Germany
• Italy
• Japan
• Norway
• Sweden
• UK
• USA
Data for each nation can be found in a separate folder. Within each folder, the following arborescence can be found:
DATA:
netCDF profile data files with name convention ***_all_prof.nc, where *** is the name of the platform
csv header file with name convention ***_list.csv
DATA_FULL_RES:
netCDF profile data files with name convention ***_fr1_prof.nc, where *** is the name of the platform. These files include the profiles deduced from the archived version of data available when tags have been recovered at the end of their deployment. This means they have higher vertical resolution (1dbar). For the few tags that were set in continuous recording mode, the number of profiles per day is also much higher (typically ~100 profiles/day). This latter data corresponds exactly to the content of the MEOP-SMS database.
netCDF trajdata files with name convention ***_traj.nc, where *** is the name of the platform. These files provides the archived version of data available when tags have been recovered at the end of their deployment. The data there are not provided without processing or adjustment.
PLOTS:
For each tag, two plots are provided. One with the interpolated version of profiles (***_data_description.png), and one with the hydrographic transects (***_data_sections.png).
Additional maps and descriptive plots are available separately for each nation, or for the entire database.
IMPORTANT: For data centers and operational oceanography applications, import only netCDF files from the DATA folder !!!
The manual describing the data formats is also available here.
The database can also be accessed as a public folder or on the ocean data portal SEANOE (doi: 10.17882/45461).
MEOP-SMS database (version 2019-05-17):
You can download the MEOP-SMS database (zip file) here: MEOP-SMS_2019-05-17.zip
The database can also be accessed as a public folder.
MEOP-TDR database (version 2019-05-09):
You can download the MEOP-TDR database (zip file) here: MEOP-TDR_2019-05-09.zip
The database can also be accessed as a public folder.
Acknowledgements and contact :
Please do not forget to support us by acknowledging our work in your publications. This is very important for us if we want to continue the development of this product. Information on how to cite the data can be found at: https://www.meop.net/database/how-to-cite.html
Please do not forget to cite us in your publications, as it is the best way to support us. Let us know about your publications using the MEOP data and we will add them to our curated list of publications.