This dataset consists of (1) Bulk properties of sea surface waves, including significant wave height, period and direction. Some additional wave properties relevant to their impact at the sea bed are also included: friction velocity, bottom orbital velocity, direction and period at the sea bed. (2) Depth-averaged eastward and northward current components and sea surface height above sea level. Additionally, eastward and northward current induced stresses at the sea bed. The modelled two datasets are prepared on the same regular grid. With a resolution of around 1/9th x 1/6th degree, i.e. ~ 12km. The continental shelf model extends from 48 to 63 degrees longitude north and from 12 degrees longitude west to 13 degrees longitude east. The dataset was generated by the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory Coastal Ocean Modelling System (POLCOMS) and the spectral wave model (WAM). The data are available in single monthly files, for a 10 year period from January 1999 to December 2008, the POLCOMS data are 30 minute averages, and the WAM data are hourly. The dataset was generated by the UK National Oceanography Centre, Liverpool. The dataset consists of 240 data files in Climate and Forecast (CF) compliant NetCDF format, 120 from POLCOMS and 120 from WAM. This work is funded by the Aggregate Levy Sustainability Fund (ALSF) under contract MEPF 09-P114 and NERC National Capability funding. More information about the modelled data set and its applications can be found in Bricheno et al. (2015), and Aldridge et al. (2014).

The data set comprises a series of ten reports containing tables of current data and diagrams of trajectories derived from neutrally buoyant floats deployed in seas across the globe. The floats were numbered between 1-180 and 209-227, with floats 1-180 being deployed between 1955 and 1964 and floats 209-227 being deployed between February and March 1969. Detailed deployment information is listed below, with deployment location, float numbers, deployment dates and ship name (if known). NE Atlantic: floats 1-5 (Jun 1955, Oct-Nov 1955); float 11 (Aug 1956); floats 12-20 (Mar 1957); floats 25-33 (May-Jul 1958); floats 34-39 (Nov 1958). Norwegian Sea: floats 6-10 (Apr-May 1956). NW Pacific: floats 21-24 (Jul-Aug 1957). Deep water off Bermuda: floats 40-53, 55, 58 (Jun-Oct 1959, RV Aries); floats 54, 56, 57 (Oct 1959, RV Crawford); floats 59-60,64-65,68, 69,71,73-74 (Jun-Dec 1959, RV Aries); floats 61-63,66, 67,70,72 (Nov 1959, RV Crawford); floats 75-77 (Dec 1959, RV Atlantis); floats 78-98 (Feb-Jun 1960, RV Aries); floats 99-119 (Jun-Aug 1960, RV Aries). Faroe-Shetland Channel: floats 120-127 (Jul 1961, RRS Discovery). Faroe Bank Channel: float 135 (1963, Ernest Holt). Labrador Sea: floats 128-132 (1962, Erika Dan). Arabian Sea: floats 133, 134, 136-139 (Jul-Aug 1963, RRS Discovery). Indian Ocean: floats 140-160 (Mar-Apr 1964, RRS Discovery); floats 161-180 (Apr-Aug 1964, RRS Discovery). NW Mediterranean: floats 209-227 (Feb-Mar 1969, RRS Discovery). The reports were produced by the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), which later became the Institute of Oceanographic Sciences Deacon Laboratory.

The data set comprises temperature, pressure, position and occasionally wave data from nine drifting buoys that were deployed across the Southern Hemisphere. Data were collected from 1979 to 1981. Each buoy carried surface pressure and sea temperature sensors, and seven of the buoys were equipped with drogues in order to aid the study of large scale, near surface ocean currents, and to complement concurrent oceanographic observations made in the area by the research ship RRS Discovery. Two of the buoys were designed with good wave following characteristics and contained accelerometers and simple processors so as to yield good wave information. The buoys were equipped with UHF telemetry transmitters to relay data to the ARGOS system on board the polar orbiting meteorological satellites Tiros-9 and NOAA-6. The buoys were were deployed by the Institute of Oceanographic Sciences Wormley Laboratory UK as part of the First Garp Global Experiment (FGGE) Southern Hemisphere Drifting Buoy Network.

Nitrogen Fixation was determined from samples collected during CTD profiles at the surface and chlorophyll maximum once per day from the North Atlantic at approximately 24.5 degrees North on cruise D346 between 5th January and 19th February 2010. The samples were incubated at sea-surface temperature for 24 hours, filtered onto ashed-GF/F's and dried in oven at 50 degrees for further 24 hours. The data are being used as part of a wider study in the role iron has in nitrogen fixation. David Honey collected these data as part of his PhD, supervised by Martha Gledhill and Eric Achterberg.

This dataset consists of measurements of density, electrical conductivity, sound velocity and travel time, salinity, depth and temperature of the water column. The data were acquired from the RV Falcon Spirit, the Plymouth University vessel. The small 14m catamaran was used on a daily basis from 13 May 2012 to 24 May 2012 in the Celtic Sea, off the Cornish coast, with the idea to capture high-quality, spatially-resolved field data ahead of the Wave Hub construction. Measurements were collected using CTDs, moored temperature loggers, ADCP, VMADCP and towed minibat CTD. These cruises formed the field component of NERC Discovery Science project "Wave Hub baseline study". The aims of the research were to obtain a detailed oceanographic study at the Wave Hub site and surrounds - covering the whole range of physical, chemical and biological parameters before the deployment of Wave Hub infrastructure and wave energy devices – and to ensure data acquisition in time and space to allow development of physical and ecosystem models at scales relevant to wave arrays. Ultimately models will make predictive assessments of the extent, timescales and intensity of ecosystem impacts and perturbation resulting from implementation of wave energy arrays. Other aims include: engagement of environmental economists to ensure the data can be used to develop economic valuation estimates of critical life-supporting ecosystem services at scales appropriate to arrays of wave devices for comparison with other uses of marine space and to address questions that have arisen directly in respect of marine renewable energy development and sustainable use of marine resources. The Discovery Science project was composed of Standard Grant reference NE/I015094/1 as the lead grant with child grants NE/I015183/1 and NE/I015108/1. The lead grant, NE/I015094/1, ran from 01 August 2010 to 31 July 2012, with Dr Ricardo Javier Torres, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, as principal investigator. The child grant NE/I015183/1 ran from 01 August 2010 to 31 July 2011, led by Professor Michael Richard Belmont, University of Exeter. The second child grant, NE/I015108/1, ran from 03 December 2010 to 31 July 2012, led by Dr Philip John Hosegood, University of Plymouth. All data detailed here were received by BODC as raw files from the RV Falcon, processed and quality controlled using in-house BODC procedures. Towed undulator CTD data and temperature logger data have been processed to completion and are available online on the BODC website. The remaining data will be made available in the near future.

This dataset consists of measurements of water column structure including hydrographic profiles, temperature and salinity, turbulence data, turbidity and fluorescence profiles, current velocities and sound velocities. The measurements were undertaken during a comprehensive survey of the southern Celtic Sea between May and August 2012. Some turbulence microstructure data were collected from the 14th to the 24th of May 2012, while the remaining data were collected from the 10th to the 22nd of August 2012, with the use of the RV Falcon Spirit. These cruises formed the field component of NERC Discovery Science project "Assessing the sensitivity of marginally stratified shelf seas within a changing climate". The data were collected in order to identify processes involved in the existence and intensity of the front displays not governed by tidal periodicities, to test whether the processes identified as important to changes in shelf sea stratification through in-situ measurements are indeed responsible for observed changes and to incorporate knew knowledge into state of the art numerical models that can up-scale the processes observed within this project to the shelf sea environment. The Discovery Science project was composed of Standard Grant reference NE/I001832/1. The project ran from 01 January 2011 to 30 June 2014. Dr Philip Hosegood of University of Plymouth School of Marine Science and Engineering was the principal investigator of this project. The moored temperature logger data have been received by BODC as raw files from the RV Falcon Spirit, processed and quality controlled using in-house BODC procedures and can be downloaded on-line from the BODC website in a variety of data formats including ASCII, ODV and NetCDF. Full documentation on the dataset is supplied on download. Raw file versions of the minibat towed undulator transect data, moored ADCP data, VMADCP data and turbulence microstructure data are available on request.

This dataset contains Autosub3 measurements (position, ice draft, sea bed depth, water temperature, salinity, depth and pressure) collected under the frame of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Ice Sheet Stability Programme. The data were collected in the Amundsen Sea region of the Antarctic, more specifically in the Pine Island Glacier, during a series of missions from RRS James Clark Ross in February 2014. Radar measurements provided information about the bottom of the glacier, which then allowed for the definition of Autosub3 tracks for the different missions. Autosub3 was equipped with a CTD, oxygen sensor, transmissometer, GPS and ADCP. The Autosub missions were conducted as part of the ‘Ocean under ice: Ocean circulation and melting beneath the ice shelves of the south-eastern Amundsen Sea (iSTAR B)’ Project. This was one of four projects delivering the NERC Ice Sheet Stability Programme, aiming to better understand the physical processes governing the rate of ice melt in the West Antarctic ice sheet. The principal investigator for iSTAR B was Dr Adrian Jenkins from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

An iRobot Seaglider (Serial Number 534) carrying a Seabird CT Sail, Paine pressure sensor and Wetlabs ECO-puck was deployed in the Celtic Sea, Northwest European Shelf for 21 days between the 4th and 25th April 2015. It maintained a position within 10 km of 49° 24.3’ N, 8° 32.9’W and completed 1547 profiles between the sea surface and 120 m water depth. Its mission was to observe the evolution of the water column structure and the accumulation of phytoplankton biomass during spring phytoplankton bloom. Following the extraction of raw data and application of manufacturer calibrations, thermal lag corrections were applied to the temperature following the methods of Garau et al. (2011) and drawing upon a flight model similar to that described by Frajka-Williams et al (2011). Unrealistically high and low values of salinity, derived after thermal inertia corrections, were removed. Further, salinity values within 40 m of the surface (where the vertical speed of the glider was typically unstable) that were greater than 3 standard deviations from the mean salinity within top 40 m were removed. Each salinity profile was smoothed with an 8 m running mean window. Four calibrated CTD casts taken within 1.6 km of the glider were used to calibrate the gliders temperature and salinity. Based on the mean temperature and salinity of water between 80 m and 105 m the glider CT sensors were found to be reading 0.0277°C and 0.0024 psu too low. These constant offsets were corrected for. Chlorophyll-a fluorescence was derived based on the manufacturers calibrations and checked against a fluorometer on the CTD. There is evidence of quenching within the surface 30-40 m during the day which has not been removed or corrected for here. Temperature, salinity and chlorophyll-a fluorescence were gridded onto regular 1 m depth intervals and the profile average position and time calculated. The glider was funded by the NERC Sensors on Gliders Programme and deployed during a UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Shelf Sea Biogeochemistry Programme cruise (DY029). The processed data are held at BODC in Matlab format.

This dataset consists of biogeochemical parameters of nitrate, phosphate, oxygen, chlorophyll-a and phytoplankton concentrations, net primary productivity and attenuation generated by the POLCOMS-ERSEM coupled hydrodynamic-ecosystem model. The modelled dataset is from the Atlantic Margin Model (AMM) implementation, extending from 40.1 to 64.9 degrees latitude north and from 19.9 degrees longitude west to 13 degrees longitude east. The dataset is on a latitude/longitude grid with latitudinal resolution of 12.3 km and longitudinal resolution between 7.8 km and 14.2 km. The data are available as monthly averages saved in annual files for the 38 year period from January 1967 to December 2004. The dataset was generated by the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory Coastal Ocean Modelling System (POLCOMS) and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory European Regional Seas Ecosystem Model (ERSEM). This work is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) National Capability funding in order to investigate the biogeochemical factors which affect primary production in the northwest European continental shelf. The dataset was generated by the UK National Oceanography Centre, Liverpool. The dataset consists of 38 data files in Climate and Forecast (CF) compliant NetCDF format. More information about the modelled data set and its applications can be found in Holt et al. (2012).

This dataset consists of measurements of underway meteorology, navigation and sea surface hydrography. The data were collected on RRS Discovery cruise DY051 through the Goban Spur and Rockall Trough areas of the North East Atlantic. The cruise spanned the 13th of May to the 3rd of June 2016. Navigation data were collected using an Applanix POSMV system and meteorology and sea surface hydrography were collected using the NMF Surfmet system. Both systems were run through the duration of the cruise, excepting times for cleaning, entering and leaving port, and while alongside. The data were collected as part of the MAC-EXP: Development of a pressurised sampling, experimentation and cultivation system for deep-sea sediments project. The project aims to develop a flexible, cost-effective alternative to in situ experimentation: a pressure-coring, experimentation and cultivation system that enables studies of deep-sea prokaryote biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, under ambient or manipulated pressure, temperature and oxygen conditions from any medium sized ocean going research ship with coring capability. This Multiple-Autoclave-Coring and Experimentation system (MAC-EXP) will aim to provide the possibility to systematically test the influence of environmental parameters, such as pressure, oxygen availability or pH on deep-sea organisms and their biochemistry, as well as on rates and pathways of biogeochemical and geomicrobial processes. The system will also aim to allow pioneering work in the field of marine biodiscovery: secondary metabolites from marine microorganisms are a rich source of chemical diversity and several marine-microbe derived compounds are now in clinical trials. Funding was provided by NERC Standard grants NE/I023465/1 (lead) and NE/I024232/1. The lead grant covered 01 February 2013 to 31 December 2016 and the child grant covered 01 April 2012 to 31 March 2015. Professor Ursula Witte of University of Aberdeen, Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences was the principal investigator for the lead grant. Professor Ronald J Parkes of Cardiff University School of Earth and Ocean Sciences was the principal investigator for the child grant. The underway navigation, meteorology and sea surface hydrography data have been received by BODC as raw files from the RRS Discovery, processed and quality controlled using in-house BODC procedures and will be made available online in the near future.