NOAA Releases Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Dataset
Available online, it includes more than 2 million chemical analyses of sediment, tissue, water, and oil, as well as toxicity testing results and related documentation collected by federal agencies, state environmental management agencies, and BP and its contractors.
NOAA has released a dataset containing more than 2 million chemical analyses and other data, including toxicity testing results, from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Earlier versions of the data were made available during and shortly after the response began in 2010, but it took NOAA employees and contractors three years to catalog the data into this final form, according to the agency.
NOAA is the official ocean data archivist for the federal government. The dataset is available here. A companion dataset, including ocean temperature and salinity data, currents, preliminary chemical results, and other properties collected and made available during the response can be found at http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/deepwaterhorizon/insitu.html.
"The size and scope of this project -- the sheer number of ships and platforms collecting data and the broad range of data types -- was a real challenge. In the end, it was a great example of what can be accomplished when you bring together the expertise across NOAA, making this quality-controlled information easily available to the general public for the first time," said Margarita Gregg, Ph. D., director of the National Oceanographic Data Center, which is part of NOAA's Satellite and Information Service.
The collection includes separate data files for water, sediment, tissue, and tar/oil analyses.