Internal waves measurements with a ship‐mounted, 300‐kHz acoustic Doppler current profiler

1990 ◽  
Vol 87 (S1) ◽  
pp. S26-S26
Author(s):  
C. L. Trump ◽  
G. O. Marmorino
2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 1067-1079 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Clément ◽  
E. Frajka-Williams ◽  
K. L. Sheen ◽  
J. A. Brearley ◽  
A. C. Naveira Garabato

AbstractDespite the major role played by mesoscale eddies in redistributing the energy of the large-scale circulation, our understanding of their dissipation is still incomplete. This study investigates the generation of internal waves by decaying eddies in the North Atlantic western boundary. The eddy presence and decay are measured from the altimetric surface relative vorticity associated with an array of full-depth current meters extending ~100 km offshore at 26.5°N. In addition, internal waves are analyzed over a topographic rise from 2-yr high-frequency measurements of an acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP), which is located 13 km offshore in 600-m deep water. Despite an apparent polarity independence of the eddy decay observed from altimetric data, the flow in the deepest 100 m is enhanced for anticyclones (25.2 cm s−1) compared with cyclones (−4.7 cm s−1). Accordingly, the internal wave field is sensitive to this polarity-dependent deep velocity. This is apparent from the eddy-modulated enhanced dissipation rate, which is obtained from a finescale parameterization and exceeds 10−9 W kg−1 for near-bottom flows greater than 8 cm s−1. The present study underlines the importance of oceanic western boundaries for removing the energy of low-mode westward-propagating eddies to higher-mode internal waves.


2005 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 583-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Scotti ◽  
B. Butman ◽  
R. C. Beardsley ◽  
P. Soupy Alexander ◽  
S. Anderson

Abstract The algorithm used to transform velocity signals from beam coordinates to earth coordinates in an acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) relies on the assumption that the currents are uniform over the horizontal distance separating the beams. This condition may be violated by (nonlinear) internal waves, which can have wavelengths as small as 100–200 m. In this case, the standard algorithm combines velocities measured at different phases of a wave and produces horizontal velocities that increasingly differ from true velocities with distance from the ADCP. Observations made in Massachusetts Bay show that currents measured with a bottom-mounted upward-looking ADCP during periods when short-wavelength internal waves are present differ significantly from currents measured by point current meters, except very close to the instrument. These periods are flagged with high error velocities by the standard ADCP algorithm. In this paper measurements from the four spatially diverging beams and the backscatter intensity signal are used to calculate the propagation direction and celerity of the internal waves. Once this information is known, a modified beam-to-earth transformation that combines appropriately lagged beam measurements can be used to obtain current estimates in earth coordinates that compare well with pointwise measurements.


2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annett B. Sullivan ◽  
Michael L. Deas ◽  
Jessica Asbill ◽  
Julie D. Kirshtein ◽  
Kenna D. Butler ◽  
...  

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