Description of ADOX

The major portion of this dataset consists of current records from a linear array of 8 moorings extending across the deep passage between the Crozet Islands and the Kerguelen Plateau. There is an additional current meter record from a single mooring northwest of the Crozet Islands. In all, 29 good records were obtained. Aanderaa current meters with a sampling interval of one hour were employed thoughout. All of the instruments recorded speed, direction, and temperature. One instrument recorded pressure (in addition) and another recorded conductivity.

A goal of the experiment was to measure the flow of deep and bottom waters passing eastward from the Enderby Abyssal Plain to the southern Indian Ocean via deep topographic gaps to the northwest and southwest of the Kerguelen Plateau. To this end current meters were placed in the main gap between Crozet and Kerguelen, and supplemented with a mooring in the deep cleft immediately to the northwest of Crozet island.

In addition, two of the moorings in the main Crozet-Kerguelen array were extended upward into the near-surface layers to aid the subsequent SWINDEX investigations into the interactions of the Agulhas and Antarctic Circumpolar Currents.

Related publications

Dickson, R.R. (1993): RRS Discovery Cruise 200: the deployment phase of the Antarctic Deep Outflow Experiment (ADOX-1). Sigma, the UK WOCE Newsletter, 13, 8-9,12.

Dickson, R.R. et al (1993): RRS Discovery Cruise 200, 6 February - 18 March 1993. Circulation and structure in the Southern Ocean between 20E and 90E and 40S and 65S. Part of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment. Lowestoft: MAFF Directorate of Fisheries Research. 66pp.

Dickson, R. (1994): The spreading of Antarctic Bottom Water into the Indian Ocean - first results of the UK ADOX Programme. International WOCE Newsletter, 16, 25-28.

Dickson, R.R. et al (1995): RRS Discovery Cruise 207, 19 February - 31 March 1994. Circulation and structure in the Southern Ocean between 20E and 90E and 20S and 65S. Part of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment. Lowestoft: MAFF Directorate of Fisheries Research. 79pp.

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.