Measurement descriptions for GoMOOS Buoy Text Reports

There are 3 lines of header data at the beginning of each file which contain the type of measurement, units of measurement, and depth of the measurement (a negative depth refers to height above the surface). The first 5 variables on each data record are the year (yy), month (MM), day (DD), hour (hh), and minute (mm) of the observation (center of observation period). All times are in UTC.

Measurement interval ranges from every 10 minutes to hourly and are listed below. As of April 2008, most buoys have been converted to sample surface met data every 10 minutes; waves and 1m temperature/salinity are sampled every 30 minutes. Ocean currents and sub-surface temperature/salinity measurements are sampled hourly.

An additional note is that these data are assembled from both satellite and cellphone sources. The Goes data only include the hourly data - if a buoy is experiencing phone problems, the data may only be hourly. Buoys M01 and N01 are particularly affected since their primary communication method is Goes (irridium phone transfers nominally every 8 hours). When the buoy completes a phone call, the higher frequency data will be retroactively filled in.