German component of ACM8

This component of ACM8 produced 37 current meter records from 11 moorings. You can view metadata and download current records by clicking on links in the table below. Each current record is identified in the table by its depth and the name of the mooring. A brief description of the experiment also is available. You may want to look at a map of the array 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.

September 91 - September 92

mooringinstr depthinstr typedatesmetadatadownload
A1 263 meters Aanderaa RCM8 08 Sep 91 - 01 Jun 92 view metadata download record
A1 876 meters Aanderaa RCM8 08 Sep 91 - 05 Sep 92 view metadata download record
A1 2088 meters Aanderaa RCM8 08 Sep 91 - 05 Sep 92 view metadata download record
A1 2551 meters Aanderaa RCM8 08 Sep 91 - 05 Sep 92 view metadata download record
B1 209 meters Aanderaa RCM8 08 Sep 91 - 05 Sep 92 view metadata download record
B1 822 meters Aanderaa RCM8 08 Sep 91 - 05 Sep 92 view metadata download record
B1 1534 meters Aanderaa RCM8 08 Sep 91 - 05 Sep 92 view metadata download record
B1 1996 meters Aanderaa RCM8 08 Sep 91 - 05 Sep 92 view metadata download record
F1 210 meters Aanderaa RCM5 19 Sep 91 - 30 Aug 92 view metadata download record
F1 510 meters Aanderaa RCM5 19 Sep 91 - 30 Aug 92 view metadata download record
F1 810 meters Aanderaa RCM5 19 Sep 91 - 30 Aug 92 view metadata download record
F1 2010 meters Aanderaa RCM5 19 Sep 91 - 29 Aug 92 view metadata download record
F1 3010 meters Aanderaa RCM5 19 Sep 91 - 30 Aug 92 view metadata download record
F1 3460 meters Aanderaa RCM5 19 Sep 91 - 19 Feb 92 view metadata download record

September 92 - October 92

mooringinstr depthinstr typedatesmetadatadownload
A2 861 meters Aanderaa RCM4 05 Sep 92 - 21 Oct 93 view metadata download record
A2 2063 meters Aanderaa RCM5 05 Sep 92 - 21 Oct 93 view metadata download record
A2 2526 meters Aanderaa RCM5 05 Sep 92 - 29 Jun 93 view metadata download record
E2 175 meters Aanderaa RCM4 02 Sep 92 - 11 Sep 93 view metadata download record
E2 2825 meters Aanderaa RCM8 02 Sep 92 - 14 Sep 93 view metadata download record
F2 181 meters Aanderaa RCM4 30 Aug 92 - 05 Aug 93 view metadata download record
F2 481 meters Aanderaa RCM5 30 Aug 92 - 10 Sep 93 view metadata download record
F2 781 meters Aanderaa RCM5 30 Aug 92 - 05 Sep 93 view metadata download record
F2 1981 meters Aanderaa RCM5 30 Aug 92 - 11 Sep 93 view metadata download record
F2 2981 meters Aanderaa RCM8 30 Aug 92 - 04 Sep 93 view metadata download record
F2 3431 meters Aanderaa RCM8 30 Aug 92 - 05 Aug 93 view metadata download record

September 93 - May 94

mooringinstr depthinstr typedatesmetadatadownload
E3 439 meters Aanderaa RCM5 15 Sep 93 - 27 May 94 view metadata download record
E3 1040 meters Aanderaa RCM4 15 Sep 93 - 27 May 94 view metadata download record

May 94 - June 95

mooringinstr depthinstr typedatesmetadatadownload
A4 269 meters Aanderaa RCM7 31 May 94 - 10 Jun 95 view metadata download record
A4 882 meters Aanderaa RCM7 31 May 94 - 10 Jun 95 view metadata download record
A4 2092 meters Aanderaa RCM8 31 May 94 - 10 Jun 95 view metadata download record
A4 2551 meters Aanderaa RCM8 31 May 94 - 02 Aug 94 view metadata download record
E4 439 meters Aanderaa RCM5 27 May 94 - 06 Jun 95 view metadata download record
E4 1041 meters Aanderaa RCM5 27 May 94 - 06 Jun 95 view metadata download record
E4 3095 meters Aanderaa RCM5 27 May 94 - 02 Jun 95 view metadata download record

October 95 - July 96

mooringinstr depthinstr typedatesmetadatadownload
VE1 2192 meters Aanderaa RCM8 03 Oct 95 - 23 Jul 96 view metadata download record
VE1 2292 meters Aanderaa RCM8 03 Oct 95 - 23 Jul 96 view metadata download record

July 96 - August 97

mooringinstr depthinstr typedatesmetadatadownload
VE21 2567 meters Aanderaa RCM8 23 Jul 96 - 24 Aug 97 view metadata download record

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Brief Description

The dominant meridional circulation in the North Atlantic carries near-surface waters of tropical and subtropical origin northward, and deep waters of arctic and subarctic origin southward. ACM8 (which includes this component plus two additional components - Denmark Strait Overflow and Iceland-Faroe Overflow) was motivated by a wish to measure the transports of mass, heat, and salt that are associated with this circulation. These are important parameters for modelling the ocean's role in climate.

The 34 current records that CMDAC has acquired from this portion of ACM8 were obtained over a period of four years, on moorings deployed in three areas along a line stretching from the southern tip of Greenland to Ireland (see map). Three of the moorings were installed in September 1991 and recovered during September 1992. Two were installed in August and September of 1992 and recovered in September 1993. One mooring was installed during September 1993 and recovered in May 1994. Finally, two moorings were installed in May 1994 and recovered in June 1995. All of the moorings carried Aanderaa current meters - RCM4's, RCM5's, RCM7's, and RCM8's.

A note on mooring names: We have 4 moorings here designated A, B, E, and F. There were at least two other moorings, C and D, about which CMDAC has received no information; nor has BSH sent us data from them. Mooring names have two letters, the first of which indicates location and the second of which indicates time sequence. Thus, Mooring A1 was in place from September 91 through September 92; it was replaced by Mooring A2 (at approximately the same location) which was in place from September 92 through October 92. CMDAC has no information from or about Mooring A3. Mooring A4 was deployed near the sites of A1 and A2, and was in place from May 94 through June 95.

Additional information about the experiment is available in a data report titled "WOCE Current measurements: the ACM8 array" (Berichte des Bundesamtes fur Seeschiffahrt und Hydrographie Nr. 8, published by BSH Hamburg, 1996). See also the data report "WOCE-NORD 1991, Cruise No. 18, 2 September - 26 September 1991" (Meteor Berichte No. 93-1, published by IFM Hamburg). Other relevant publications:

Meincke, J. (1989): The Greenland Sea Project. WOCE Newsletter, 8, 14-15.

Sy, A., U. Schauer and J. Meincke (1992): The North Atlantic Current and its associated hydrographic structure above and eastward of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Deep-Sea Research, 39(5A), 825-853.

Bersch, M. and J. Meincke (1995): Meridional transport estimates for the northern North Atlantic. International WOCE Newsletter, 18, 28-31.

Mittelstaedt, E., J. Meincke and H. Klein (1996): WOCE current measurements: the ACM8 array. Berichte des Bundesamtes fur Seeschiffahrt und Hydrographie, 8, 149pp.

Sy, A., M. Rhein, J.R.N. Lazier, K.P. Koltermann, J. Meincke, A. Putzka and M. Bersch (1997): Surprisingly rapid spreading of newly formed intermediate waters across the North Atlantic Ocean. Nature, 386(6626), 675-679.

Bersch, M, J. Meincke and A. Sy (1999): Interannual thermohaline changes in the North Atlantic 1991-1996. Deep-Sea Research II, 46(1/2), 55-75.

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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.

You should know 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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