ACM27 (Morena)

This experiment produced 10 current meter records from three moorings. You can view metadata and download the records by clicking on links in the table below. Each current meter record is identified in the table by mooring name and depth. A brief description of the experiment also is available. You may want to look at a map to see where the mooring was. If you download any of the current meter records you should review the note on file format. From here you can also move up one level to the list of WOCE experiments.

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The MORENA region extends from 40N to 43N and lies between the coast and 11W (see map). Seaward of the rather regular and relatively wide continental shelf, the bottom topography is quite complex. Several submarine canyons indent the slope in the southern part of the MORENA region, and the southern line was designed to be placed as far away from their influence as possible.

The experiment was designed to produce year-long time series of horizontal velocity and temperature, as well as conductivity and pressure at some depths, with Aanderaa current meters placed near the sourthern and the northern boundaries of the MORENA study region. The intended measurement depths were 100m, in the lower part of the seasonal surface layer; 300m, well within the Central Water; 800m and 1200m, near the upper and lower cores of the Mediterranean Water, respectively; and 2000 or 3000m in the North Atlantic Deep Water (at levels depending on the depth of the bottom at each mooring).

As described in the MORENA reports mentioned above, there were several losses of equipment during the experiment and also some malfunctions. No data were collected from the most westerly mooring of the northern line. In addition, measurements at 100m were obtained at only one mooring, Mooring C of the northern line. Measurements at the 300m design depth were successful in about half of the moorings. Nevertheless, a total of 22 current meters provided good data, most of them with complete records.

A related publication

Fiuza, A.F.G., M. Hamann, I. Ambar, G. Diaz del Rio, N. Gonzalez and J.M. Cabanas (1998): Water masses and their circulation off western Iberia during May 1993. Deep-Sea Res. I, 45(7), 1127-1160.

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netCDF is a self-documenting format that can be accessed by a variety of software tools. We have included here a Matlab script that can be used to read netCDF current records in an environment that contains the Matlab/netCDF interface created by CSIRO. You can Click here to learn more about netCDF.

We are aware that users who are unfamiliar with netCDF or who lack software to deal with it, may find the netCDF format more a deterrent than an aid to effective use of the data. We have included in this CDROM set a second disk that is identical to this one, except that the current meter records have OSU's "Stranger" format. The Stranger format, like netCDF, is self-documenting but utilizes the ASCII code. It is easily readable by both humans and computers; you may find it preferable to netCDF.

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