WATTS (a component of ACM1)

This experiment produced

from 5 moorings. You can view metadata and/or 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 to see where the moorings were. If you download any of the records you should review the note on file format. From here you can also move up one level to the list of WOCE experiments.

All of the time series in this archive are filtered and have a time increment of 12 hours. The diurnal tides and all higher frequencies have been removed. The original unfiltered files may be available from the PI's.

mooringinstr depthinstr typedatesmetadatadownload
Mooring 268 100 meters VACM 19 Jun 90 - 15 Nov 91 view metadata download record
Mooring 268 400 meters Aanderaa RCM 19 Jun 90 - 09 Feb 91 view metadata download record
Mooring 268 800 meters Aanderaa RCM 19 Jun 90 - 01 Jan 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 269 180 meters VACM 20 Jun 90 - 09 May 91 view metadata download record
Mooring 269 480 meters Aanderaa RCM 20 Jun 90 - 10 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 269 880 meters Aanderaa RCM 20 Jun 90 - 10 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 269 1280 meters Aanderaa RCM 20 Jun 90 - 02 Apr 91 view metadata download record
Mooring 269 2080 meters VACM 20 Jun 90 - 10 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 269 3080 meters VACM 20 Jun 90 - 10 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 269 4080 meters VACM 20 Jun 90 - 10 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 270 180 meters VACM 21 Jun 90 - 02 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 270 480 meters Aanderaa RCM 21 Jun 90 - 02 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 270 880 meters Aanderaa RCM 21 Jun 90 - 02 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 270 1280 meters Aanderaa RCM 21 Jun 90 - 23 Mar 91 view metadata download record
Mooring 270 2080 meters VACM 21 Jun 90 - 02 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 270 3080 meters VACM 21 Jun 90 - 02 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 270 4080 meters VACM 21 Jun 90 - 02 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 271 180 meters VACM 22 Jun 90 - 09 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 271 280 meters TD recorder 22 Jun 90 - 09 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 271 480 meters Aanderaa RCM 22 Jun 90 - 09 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 271 880 meters Aanderaa RCM 22 Jun 90 - 09 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 271 1280 meters Aanderaa RCM 22 Jun 90 - 09 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 271 1480 meters TD recorder 22 Jun 90 - 09 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 271 2080 meters VMCM 22 Jun 90 - 09 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 271 3080 meters VACM 22 Jun 90 - 24 Feb 91 view metadata download record
Mooring 271 4080 meters VACM 22 Jun 90 - 09 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 272 180 meters VACM 24 Jun 90 - 05 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 272 280 meters TD recorder 24 Jun 90 - 04 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 272 440 meters Aanderaa RCM 24 Jun 90 - 04 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 272 1200 meters VMCM 24 Jun 90 - 04 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 272 1400 meters TD recorder 24 Jun 90 - 04 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 272 2000 meters VMCM 24 Jun 90 - 15 Dec 91 view metadata download record
Mooring 272 3000 meters VACM 24 Jun 90 - 04 Feb 92 view metadata download record
Mooring 272 4000 meters VACM 24 Jun 90 - 05 Feb 92 view metadata download record

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Description of WATTS

The overall goal of the Western Atlantic Thermohaline Transport Study (WATTS) was to resolve the meridional transports of volume and heat in western boundary currents and recirculating gyres east of Abaco Island (see map) using direct measurements with moored current meter arrays. These derived transport time series will be used - together with continuing measurements of Florida Current transports from calibrated cable voltages provided by the ongoing NOAA Atlantic Climate Change Program (ACCP) - to make the first simultaneous measurements of both the upper and lower layer parts of the inter-hemispheric thermohaline circulation. Collaboration with investigators from NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Atmospheric Laboratory and the ACCP provides hydrographic sections across the moored array, spatial water mass surveys, as well as ship time to deploy and recover the moorings. This program also coincides with the NSF-supported deep RAFOS float program Pathways of the Deep Western Boundary Current by Dr. K. leaman at the University of Miami, and with an array of electric field sensors and bottom pressure recorders deployed along the WATTS line by Drs. A. Chave and J. Filloux of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Scripps Institute of Oceanography, respectively.

This program also has the objective to preserve the continuity of western boundary time series begun by the STACS Program begun in 1986.

The moorings were instrumented with Aanderaa current meters, VACMs, VMCMs, and temperature-depth recorders. All of the current meters measured current speed and direction, and temperature. Several of the current meters also measured pressure.

Related publications

Zantopp R.J., T.N.Lee and W.E.Johns (1994): Moored current meter observations east of Abaco, Bahamas, at 26.5 deg N (WATTS Array). University of Miami RSMAS Technical Report 93-006, 77 pp.

Lee, T.N., W.E. Johns, R.J. Zantopp and E.R. Fillenbaum (1996): Moored observations of Western Boundary Current variability and thermocline circulation at 26.5N in the subtropical North Atlantic. J. Phys. Oceanog., 26(6), 962-983.

Johns, W.E., T.N. Lee, R.J. Zantopp and E. Fillenbaum (1997): Updated transatlantic heat flux at 26.5N. International WOCE Newsletter, 27, 15-22.

Fillenbaum, E.R., T.N. Lee, W.E. Johns and R.J. Zantopp (1997): Meridional heat transport variability at 26.5N in the North Atlantic. J. Phys. Oceanog., 27(1), 153-174.

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Format of the current records

These files have been compressed with the ZIP compression utility. After downloading them, you will need to expand them. On a PC, WinZip or Pkunzip will do the job. Other utilities are available for the Unix and Macintosh environments. After expansion, you will have ascii files in OSU's stranger format.

The stranger format begins with several lines of header information that are meant to be machine-readable. They contain a Fortran format specification that will be useful in reading the file, a pointer to the first line of data, and a description of the data. Each line of the current record itself contains the time of the sample, the values recorded, and a line count.

Please be aware that end-of-line in these files is a carriage-return plus line-feed (the PC convention). This means that in a Unix environment (where a single line-feed serves as end-of-line) you may want to remove the carriage-returns.

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