Intertidal Temperature from Coastal Nova Scotia

To address this knowledge gap, we measured temperature every half hour during a period of 5.5 years (2014-2019) at nine wave-exposed rocky intertidal locations along the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. This data set is freely available from the figshare online repository (Scrosati and Ellrich, 2020a; doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12462065.v1). We summarize the main properties of this data set by focusing on location-wise values of daily maximum and minimum temperature and daily SST, which we make freely available as a separate data set in figshare (Scrosati et al., 2020; doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12453374.v1).

Overall, this cold-temperate coast exhibited a wide annual SST range, from a lowest overall value of -1.8 °C in winter to a highest overall value of 22.8 °C in summer. In addition, the latitudinal SST trend along this coast experienced a reversal from winter (when SST increased southwards) to summer (when SST decreased southwards), seemingly driven by alongshore differences in summer coastal upwelling. Daily temperature maxima and minima were more extreme, as expected from their occurrence during low tides, ranging from a lowest overall value of -16.3 °C in winter to a highest overall value of 41.2 °C in summer.

Daily maximum temperature in summer varied little along the coast, while daily minimum temperature in winter increased southwards. This data set is the first of its kind for the Atlantic Canadian coast and exemplifies in detail how intertidal temperature varies in wave-exposed environments on a cold-temperate coast.