PCM11 (Samoan Passage Experiment)

This experiment produced 26 current meter records from 6 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.

mooringinstr depthinstr typedatesmetadatadownload
SAMOA 1 2990 meters Aanderaa RCM8 23 Sep 92 - 24 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 1 3980 meters Aanderaa RCM8 23 Sep 92 - 24 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 1 4230 meters Aanderaa RCM8 23 Sep 92 - 24 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 2 4340 meters Aanderaa RCM8 22 Sep 92 - 24 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 2 4640 meters Aanderaa RCM8 22 Sep 92 - 24 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 2 4890 meters Aanderaa RCM8 22 Sep 92 - 24 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 3 2890 meters Aanderaa RCM8 22 Sep 92 - 25 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 3 3940 meters Aanderaa RCM8 22 Sep 92 - 25 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 3 4350 meters Aanderaa RCM8 22 Sep 92 - 25 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 3 4650 meters Aanderaa RCM8 22 Sep 92 - 25 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 3 4900 meters Aanderaa RCM8 22 Sep 92 - 25 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 3 5103 meters Aanderaa RCM8 22 Sep 92 - 25 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 4 3970 meters Aanderaa RCM8 21 Sep 92 - 25 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 4 4300 meters Aanderaa RCM8 21 Sep 92 - 25 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 4 4650 meters Aanderaa RCM8 21 Sep 92 - 25 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 4 4900 meters Aanderaa RCM8 21 Sep 92 - 25 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 4 5100 meters Aanderaa RCM8 21 Sep 92 - 25 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 5 3980 meters Aanderaa RCM8 20 Sep 92 - 25 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 5 4330 meters Aanderaa RCM8 20 Sep 92 - 25 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 5 4630 meters Aanderaa RCM8 20 Sep 92 - 25 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 5 4880 meters Aanderaa RCM8 20 Sep 92 - 25 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 5 5080 meters Aanderaa RCM8 20 Sep 92 - 25 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 6 2970 meters Aanderaa RCM8 20 Sep 92 - 26 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 6 3940 meters Aanderaa RCM8 20 Sep 92 - 26 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 6 4160 meters Aanderaa RCM8 20 Sep 92 - 26 Feb 94 view metadata download record
SAMOA 6 4360 meters Aanderaa RCM8 20 Sep 92 - 26 Feb 94 view metadata download record

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Description of WOCE component PCM11

The Samoan Passage experiment was designed to determine the northward transport of abyssal water through the Samoan Passage (10S, 170W). This topographic constriction forms the major connection for deep interbasin flow between hemispheres in the Pacific. Here we present current meter data from the six subsurface moorings deployed in the Passage during September 1992 and recovered in February 1994.

The six moorings were placed along a transect of the Passage (see map and vertical section). A total of 27 Aanderaa RCM8 current meters were employed, each measuring horizontal current and temperature, with the upper two meters on each mooring also measuring pressure. All instruments were recovered. There were some failures:

The quality of the remaining records was excellent.

The experiment's PIs were R.D.Pillsbury of Oregon State University and Daniel L. Rudnick of University of Washington.

Related publications

Johnson, G. C., D. L. Rudnick and B. A. Taft (1994): Bottom water variability in the Samoa Passage. J. Mar. Res., 98, 6883-6893.

Pillsbury, R.D., D.L. Rudnick, J.M. Bottero, G. Pittock, D.C. Root, J. Simpkins and R.E. Still (1995): Current meter data from the Samoan Passage Experiment. Oregon State University College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences Data Report #159, 125pp.

Roemmich, D., S. Hautala and D. Rudnick (1996): Northward abyssal transport through the Samoan Passage and adjacent regions. J. Geophys. Res., 101, 14039-14055.

Rudnick, D. L. (1997): Direct velocity measurements in the Samoan Passage. J. Geophys. Res., 102, 3293-3302.

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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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