Iceland-Faroe Overflow (ACM8)

This component of ACM8 produced 13 current meter records from 7 moorings. You can view metadata and download the records by clicking on links in the table below. A brief description of the experiment also is available. Each current meter record is identified in the table by its depth and the name of the mooring. You may want to look at a map of the array first to see where the moorings were. 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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Seven moorings were placed in a line running southeastward from the edge of the Iceland shelf, approximately 300 km downstream from the crest of the Iceland-Faroe Ridge ( see map). Every mooring contained an Aanderaa RCM8 positioned 10 meters above the seafloor. Four of the seven moorings contained an additional instrument about 300 meters above the seafloor, and two of those four moorings contained a third instrument placed about 600 meters above the bottom. In all, there were thirteen current meters.

The moorings were installed in July 1990 and recovered in March 1992, but the current meters exhausted their capacity after 13 months. Eight of the instruments functioned for the full 13 months; one failed after 11 months, another after about 9 months and another after 6 months. Two meters provided only about 2 weeks" worth of data.

Related publications

Saunders, P.M. (1990): Cold outflow from the Faeroe Bank Channel. J. Phys. Oceanog., 20(1), 29-43.

Saunders, P.M. and B.A. King (1995): Oceanic fluxes on the WOCE A11 section. J. Phys. Oceanog., 25(9), 1942-1958.

Saunders, P.M. (1996): The flux of dense cold overflow water southeast of Iceland. J. Phys. Oceanog., 26(1), 85-95.

Saunders, P.M. (2001): The dense northern overflows. In Ocean Circulation and Climate: Observing and Modelling the Global Ocean, pp. 401-417. Academic Press, San Diego.

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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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