ACOUSTIC MOORING DATA

S. Hill (Institute of Ocean Sciences, CANADA)

Announced availability: 1 March 1994

Data Access

Thermistor chain and WOTAN data and acoustic instrument time series for the acoustic mooring can be found at the COARE Moored Data Archive at NOAA/PMEL's Tropical Atmosphere-Ocean Array (TAO) Project Office (http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/coare/coare-data.html).

Background

The acoustic mooring was operated at 1 30 S, 155 45 E to estimate surface winds, surface wave field, occurence of wave breaking and rainfall, and entrainment of air and resultant organization and distribution of bubble clouds.

The top of the acoustic mooring was approximately 30 m below the surface. The mooring was equipped with

  • ELSI acoustic instrument (four upward-looking sonars, four 100-kHz side scan sonars, and a hydrophone)
  • SeaCat at 30 m
  • Interocean S4 current meter (34 m, sampling every 30 min, 2-min vector average)
  • Aanderaa TR2 thermistor chain (50 m long, 11 sensors at 5 m spacing, sampling every 30 min, suspended 10 m below the primary acoustic instrument) from 35 m to 85 m
  • WOTAN (Weather Observation Through Ambient Noise, sampling 16 times per hour) at 87 m.

Data File Information

The following datasets are available:

Thermistor chain data: Data were sampled and stored every 30 min, and good data are available for the period starting 12:00UTC on 22 October 1992 through 24:00UTC on 12 February 1993. Note: Since the instrument was bottom-moored, the depth of the thermistor chain varied throughout the deployment, from a minimum of 33 m to a maximum of 48 m at the top of the chain.

Primary acoustic instrument data: The instrument collected an hourly series of measurements of instrument depth, water temperature, and conductivity. These data are available for the period starting 12:05UTC on 22 October 1992 through 02:04UTC on 6 March 1993. Sensor depths range from 23 m through 38 m during that period.

The primary acoustic instrument also collected time series of pressure, temperature and conductivity at 2Hz for 20-min periods every 25 hours from 12:05UTC 22 October 1992 through 02:04UTC on 6 March 1993.

For more information, please contact:

David Farmer
Institute of Ocean Sciences
P.O. Box 6000
9860 West Saanich Road
Sidney, B.C.
Canada V8L 4B2

email: dmf@ios.bc.ca
Phone: (250) 363-6591
FAX: (250) 363-6798

Send copies of any request to Grace Kamitakahara-King at grk@ios.bc.ca.

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