**************** LATEX-A CD-ROM READ ME - SEPTEMBER 1998 ********************* (Best displayed or printed in a 10-pt mono-space font like courier or monaco.) The Louisiana-Texas Shelf Physical Oceanography Program (LATEX) was sponsored by the Minerals Management Service (MMS) of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Of its three study units, the Texas-Louisiana Shelf Circulation and Transport Processes Study (LATEX A or LATEX Shelf) was conducted by the Texas A&M University System. The LATEX A field program ran from April 1992 to December 1994. The study area encompassed the Texas-Louisiana continental shelf offshore of approximately the 10-m isobath, from the Mississippi River to the Rio Grande. The five major field components were: moored current meter measurements, drifting buoys, hydrography, acoustic Doppler current profiling (ADCP), and meteorological buoys. This is the fifth and final CD-ROM from the LATEX A program. It contains hydrographic, ADCP, drifting buoy, and expendable probe data collected during the LATEX A field program. The final data reports for these data sets are also included on this CD-ROM in PDF format. ******************************************************************************** This CD-ROM contains the following LATEX-A items; 1) REPORTS - Final data reports from the LATEX-A program. adcp.pdf - Final data report for the ADCP sensor. drift.pdf - Final data report for the drifting buoys and miscellaneous sensors. hydro.pdf - Final data report for the hydrographic program. 2) DATA FILES - Data files in ascii format. ADCP - ADCP data from eight hydrographic and one mooring service cruise. BOTTLE - Salinity, nutrients, pigments, dissolved oxygen, and total suspended material from Niskin bottle samples collected on the ten hydrographic survey cruises. CMCTD - CTD data collected during the eighteen current meter mooring service cruises at the mooring locations. (These data appeared on the first CD-ROM in this series. They are repeated here because since they complement the hydrographic CTD series). DRIFTER - Six-hourly spline-fitted trajectories, velocity, and temperature from nineteen satellite-tracked drifting buoys. HYDCTD - CTD/Optical profiles collected during 10 hydrographic survey cruises. SAIL - Underway temperature and salinity at 3 m collected by the thermo- salinograph during three hydrographic cruises. SECCI - Secci disk observations during the ten hydrographic cruises. XPEND - XBT,XCP,and XSV data (These data appeared on the first CD-ROM in this series. They are repeated here because these data are discussed in the final data report for drifting buoys and miscellaneous sensors and for the most part, these probes were deployed during the hydrographic cruises). 3) SOFTWARE ACROREAD - Adobe Acrobat Reader 3.0 software for Macintosh and DOS/WIN, and UNIX platforms to view and print the data reports. ---- DATA REPORT NOTES The LATEX Shelf Data Reports provide extensive documentation on the collection and processing of the respective data sets, as well as figures, tables, and other data products. The data reports are located in the REPORTS subdirectory and are in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF). You will need to install Adobe's Acrobat Reader software on your system to view or print pages from these reports. Reader software for Macintosh O/S, DOS/WIN, and UNIX platforms are provided on this CD-ROM in the ACROREAD directory. The latest updates are available from Adobe's website http://www.adobe.com. Select the bookmark icon in the Reader menu bar to display bookmarks. Toggle the arrowheads to raise and drop the hierarchical menus. Selecting a bookmark will display that page. Other controls will allow you to navigate through the report, search for selected strings, copy text and graphics, and print all or selected pages. DATA FILE FORMATS All data files on this CD-ROM are simple ASCII text files. Each line in these files is terminated with the line terminator native to the UNIX operating system. This terminator differs from those used by Macintosh and PC systems, however, most "text readers" on PC/MAC platforms will have no difficulty reading and displaying UNIX text files. Some "word processors" may have difficulty with these "foreign" line terminators. On a Macintosh computer an extra character may appear at the line ends. On a PC, the entire file may appear as one long string. If the files do not appear properly formatted on your machine, try different settings or software, or ftp the files to the target machine using "ASCII" or "TEXT" mode. Some implementations of ftp will convert the line terminators for you. We chose the UNIX format because we felt most people working with a large number of large files would be doing so on a UNIX workstation. FILE NAMES Most sub-directory and data file names are based on the hydrographic cruise identifier or mooring service cruise identifier. There were ten hydrographic cruises identified as H01-H10 (aka 92a,92b...94J), and eighteen current meter mooring service cruises CM01-CM18 (or M01-M18). In addition to the cruise identifier, sequence letters, numbers, or mooring numbers are used to identify when and from where the data were derived. Hydrographic data files (e.g. d92c114.dat) all start with the letter "d", followed by the two-digit year, another letter indicating the cruise sequence within the field program (a=first cruise, b= second cruise etc.), a three digit sequence number which indicates station sequence within a cruise, and the suffix ".dat". Note that stations from different cruises with the same sequence numbers are not from the same geographic location. Niskin bottle data files begin with the hydrographic cruise designator followed by either "pigm" for pigment data or by "bott" for all other measured parameters. Drifter data files are identified by the unique ID assigned by Service ARGOS - the organization that provided the satellite-tracking services. CTD data files from the mooring service cruises begin with the four-character cruise designator (CM01-CM18), followed by the letter "M" for mooring, followed by a two-digit mooring designator. Any letter following the mooring number indicates that more than one cast was made during the visit. (Often a CTD cast was made before removing a current meter and again after the new one was deployed). The expendable probe data files are named using the cruise designator followed by the sequence within the cruise. FURTHER INFORMATION Each and every data file contains metadata (data about the data) that completely describes where, when, and how the following data were collected. Any special notes appear in these files preceded by the string "$LATEX". The user is strongly urged to read and consider such lines before using the data. Also, the accompanying data reports contain extensive documentation regarding the collection program, inventories, instrumentation, problems, and special processing notes. ---- FINAL NOTES The LATEX-A team has done their best to ensure these data are error free. However, errors may have eluded us. We remain interested in applying further needed corrections to these data. So, if you find errors or have questions about the data or reports, please contact the Department of Oceanography at Texas A&M University through the address listed below. Other CD-ROMs in the LATEX-A series contain current meter, meteorological buoy, and directional wave data collected during the LATEX A program. Oceanographic data were collected in the same region and time period by the Coastal Studies Institute at Louisiana State University (LATEX-B), Science Applications International Corporation, Raleigh NC,(LATEX-C) and the GulfCet program of Texas A&M University-Galveston. Some or all of these data are available on CD-ROM from NODC. The Texas-Louisiana Shelf Circulation and Transport Processes Study (LATEX-A) was conducted by personnel of the Department of Oceanography and the Geochemical Environmental Research Group (GERG), of the College of Geosciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas. Questions or comments on the contents of this CD-ROM should be directed to; The LATEX Program Department of Oceanography Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-3146 Phone :(409)-862-4168 FAX :(409)-847-8879 (fax) For ordering information or general questions contact; National Oceanographic Data Center User Services Group SSMC3, 4th Floor, OC1 1315 East-West Hwy. Silver Spring, MD 20910 Phone : (301) 713-3277 FAX : (301) 713-3302 E-Mail: services@nodc.noaa.gov This study was funded by the U.S. Minerals Management Service, under contract Number OCS 14-35-0001-30509. Additional funding has been provided by Texas A&M University, the Texas Engineering Experiment Station, and the Texas Institute of Oceanography. We thank them for their support. These data are archived with NODC under Project Code 0212.