1. Australian Antarctic Data Centre
2. Discover and Manage Data
3. Records
4. AADC-00044

Description

This dataset contains current meter data from Prydz Bay, Antarctica. Four moorings each consisting of four current meters were deployed at various locations in Prydz Bay. Data was obtained between January 1985 and February 1986. Each of the four current meters per mooring measured time, water temperature, speed and direction every sixty minutes. Moorings 1 and 3 also each had one current meter equipped with a pressure sensor. All meters on mooring 4 measured pressure and conductivity. The four meters on each mooring were positioned at the intended depths of 200m, 350m, 500m and near-bottom. Eleven of the sixteen current meters deployed were recovered with data intact, and summary results and deployment details are given in the documentation.

The fields in this dataset are:
DEVICE IDENTIFICATION
SAMPLE PERIOD
TEMPERATURE PARAMETERS
CONDUCTIVITY PARAMETERS
SEA CURRENT DIRECTION PARAMETERS
SEA CURRENT SPEED PARAMETERS
DATE
TIME
TEMPERATURE (DEGREES C)
SALINITY (Ppt)
DIRECTION (degrees)
SPEED (knots)

Quality

Only eleven of the sixteen meters were recovered with data intact. Mooring 2 was unable to be retrieved. Current meter 7621 flooded, and all data were lost. Pressure sensors on current meters 6149 and 6150 were deployed too deep and didn't record any valid pressure data. In terms of coverage, the four moorings were located so as to provide good coverage of the area. Each of the four moorings consisted of four Aanderaa current meters, at depths of 200m, 350m, 500m, and near-bottom. Eleven meters were recovered with data intact, recording time, direction, speed and temperature at 60 minute intervals. Mooring 4 had a pressure and conductivity sensor on all meters, moorings 1 and 3 had pressure sensors on current meters 7621 and 7623. Data were read from Aanderaa tapes and processed to produce a calibrated data file. Further processing consisted of tidal height and spectral analyses. Calibrated files contain 5 lines of header information followed by the data in 14-column format. Scatter plots of U and V velocity, progressive-vector plots, temperature/time plots, stick plots, tidal height analyses, power spectra and monthly tables of general statistics have been produced from the data, and are presented in the report referenced above. Analyses were performed on raw data. Power spectra were smoothed by band averaging four adjacent spectral estimates, giving each spectral estimate eight degrees of freedom. A linear detrend was applied to the time series before spectral analysis.

Access

These data are publicly available for download from the provided URL.

Temporal Coverages

• Start date: 1985-01-16 - Stop date: 1986-02-06

Spatial Coverages

Science Keywords

• EARTH SCIENCE > OCEANS > OCEAN CIRCULATION > OCEAN CURRENTS
• EARTH SCIENCE > OCEANS > OCEAN TEMPERATURE > WATER TEMPERATURE
• EARTH SCIENCE > OCEANS > SALINITY/DENSITY > SALINITY

Use Constraints

This data set conforms to the CCBY Attribution License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Please follow instructions listed in the citation reference provided at http://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/metadata/citation.cfm?entry_id=AADC-00044 when using these data.