Surface current data from ocean drifters in the Indian Ocean

The University of Western Australia (UWA) developed and deployed surface drifters at different offshore locations during the period 2019 to 2022. Each of these drifters provided data for a maximum of ~9 months. These undrogued drifters were 0.60 m in length and contained a GPS tracker, which provided drifter positions at intervals between 4 and 7 minutes. The drifter position data were quality controlled for outlier removal and were interpolated linearly to an equal time interval of 5 minutes. This provided a mean spatial resolution of 120 m. The position information was used as a proxy to estimate the Lagrangian surface currents off Australia and surrounding open ocean regions. Each of the drifter data are stored in netcdf files containing the latitude and longitude positions, time, and zonal and meridional velocity components.