Kuroshio Regional Extension Experiment - KERE (PCM7)

This experiment produced 21 current meter records from 8 moorings (4 moorings occupied twice). You can view metadata and download individual records by clicking on links in the table below, where each record is identified by its depth and the name of the mooring. If you do download any of the current meter records you should review the note on file format. A brief description of the experiment is available here, and you may want to look at a map of the array to see where the moorings were. From here you can also move up one level to the list of WOCE experiments.

mooringinstr depthinstr typedatesmetadatadownload
B1 2046 meters Neil Brown ACM 11 Jul 92 - 21 Jun 93 view metadata download record
B1 3046 meters Neil Brown ACM 11 Jul 92 - 16 Jun 93 view metadata download record
C1 2172 meters Neil Brown ACM 13 Jul 92 - 22 Jun 93 view metadata download record
C1 4172 meters Neil Brown ACM 13 Jul 92 - 22 Jun 93 view metadata download record
D1 443 meters Neil Brown ACM 14 Jul 92 - 23 Jun 93 view metadata download record
D1 1943 meters Neil Brown ACM 14 Jul 92 - 23 Jun 93 view metadata download record
E1 525 meters Neil Brown ACM 17 Jul 92 - 26 Jun 93 view metadata download record
E1 2025 meters Neil Brown ACM 17 Jul 92 - 29 Sep 92 view metadata download record
E1 5025 meters Neil Brown ACM 19 Jul 92 - 25 Jun 93 view metadata download record
B2 2017 meters Neil Brown ACM 23 Jun 93 - 25 May 94 view metadata download record
C2 2156 meters Neil Brown ACM 24 Jun 93 - 24 May 94 view metadata download record
C2 3156 meters Neil Brown ACM 24 Jun 93 - 24 May 94 view metadata download record
C2 4156 meters Neil Brown ACM 24 Jun 93 - 24 May 94 view metadata download record
D2 362 meters Neil Brown ACM 26 Jun 93 - 23 May 94 view metadata download record
D2 1862 meters Neil Brown ACM 26 Jun 93 - 23 May 94 view metadata download record
D2 2862 meters Neil Brown ACM 26 Jun 93 - 23 May 94 view metadata download record
D2 4862 meters Neil Brown ACM 26 Jun 93 - 23 May 94 view metadata download record
E2 530 meters Neil Brown ACM 29 Jun 93 - 12 Oct 93 view metadata download record
E2 2030 meters Neil Brown ACM 29 Jun 93 - 22 May 94 view metadata download record
E2 3030 meters Neil Brown ACM 29 Jun 93 - 22 May 94 view metadata download record
E2 5030 meters Neil Brown ACM 29 Jun 93 - 22 May 94 view metadata download record

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Description of WOCE component PCM7

Previous experiments pointed to the existence of a deep western boundary current off Japan, but the results were not conclusive or statistically significant. Hence a primary focus of the KERE field program was to verify and describe this current, by placing a line of current meter moorings across the Japan Trench near 35N, 143E.

The initial cruise was in July 1992. Five current meter moorings (CMMs) and 10 inverted echo sounders (IESs) were deployed, and 18 CTD stations were conducted. Of the five CMMs, four (labelled B, C, D and E on the accompanying map) were recovered in July 1993, and redeployed. The four moorings were recovered for a second time in May 1994. The current meters were Neil Brown/EG&G ACM-II acoustic current meters. The ACM-II is a vector-averaging instrument that records internally on a cassette tape.

Plots of the current meter time series, as well as statistics (means, extrema, and standard deviations) can be found in the data report, "Current Meter Observations During the Kuroshio Extension Regional Experiment", by Zachariah R. Hallock and William J. Teague, issued by the Naval Research Laboratory as Report NRL/MR/7332-95-7591, and dated 22 May 1995. The authors of the report discuss "offset corrections" that they applied to the data. These corrections were designed to compensate for errors introduced by the instruments. The procedure is somewhat uncertain, and the authors recommend that the corrected velocities be used in the case of some current records, and the uncorrected velocities in other cases. The files in CMDAC's database are those recommended by the authors; that is, some are corrected and some are not.

Related publications

Hallock, Z.R. (1993): NRL redeploys KERE array. WOCE Notes, 5(3), 12-13.

Hallock, Z.R., and W.J. Teague (1996): Evidence for a North Pacific deep western boundary current. J. Geophys. Res., 101(C3), 6617-6624.

Shiller, A.M., W.J. Teague and Z.R. Hallock (1996): Deep water properties near 35 degrees N, 143 degrees E, observed during the Kuroshio Extension Regional Experiment. J. Geophys. Res., 101(C7), 16696-16702.

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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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