What's new in the Deep Water Archive
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5 March 2024
We have reworked parts of the Quick Search portion of this archive, making some of the substructures more logical and checking links. Please let us know if you find any links that do not connect up.
24 November 2023
The Kuroshio Extension Observatory is a sister experiment to the Ocean Station PAPA moorings of PMEL. Current meter and ADCP records from the latter moorings are already present here in this archive. We have just added the current meter and ADCP data from the Kuroshio Extension Observatory; you can find them here. The earliest is from 2005 and the latest from 2023. They comprise 46 current meter records from 16 moorings and 61 ADCP records from 3 moorings.
10 May 2023
Today we have added 127 current meter and ADCP records to the database. They are from PMEL's Ocean Station PAPA, a long term mooring in the North Central Pacific. This installation began in 2007 and continues to the present. It consists of a meteorological buoy with current meters, profilers, and Seabird CTDs suspended beneath it. You can access the current measurements here.
10 April 2023
At the conclusion of WOCE (the World Ocean Circulation Experiment) we produced a browser-readable CD that contained the WOCE current meter data in two formats, the ASCII stranger format that we use on this site, and netCDF. netCDF was actually the official WOCE data format, because it can be used for virtually any type of ocean data. Today we have included an image of that CD here. Following links on those pages you can access all of the current meter data in either format. Previously that CD image was available only on an obscure NOAA webpage.
10 April 2023
A user has notified us of missing or erroneous links in two of the experiments on this site: OSNAP 53N (Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program) and the JAMSTEC experiment TOCS (Tropical Ocean Climate Studies). These anomalies may have occured when we moved the website from our old hosting service to a new one. They have now been fixed and both experiments are now intact. TOCS is here. and OSNAP 53N is here.
10 January 2023
After a long hiatus in activity on this site, we have added 26 current meter records from OCEAN STATION PAPA. These are year-long recordings from shallow depths on a taut line mooring below a meteorlogical buoy maintained in the North Pacific by PMEL. The first records are from 2007 and the most recent included here are from 2021/2022. Most of the instruments measured currents at 15 meters and 35 meters depth. You can access these records here.
4 July 2021
ADCP records from the OSNAP Irminger Sea moorings (referenced below) are now available here. We have included u, v, w, and depth from the deepest 32 bins at each mooring. The remaining near-surface bins are not really useful but we will send them to you on request.
15 June 2021
Current meter, Microcat, and temperature logger data from 5 moorings in the Irminger Sea are now available here, 44 records in all. Each of these moorings carried an ADCP but we have not included the ADCP data here. It may or may not appear later.
31 May 2021
We are at long last reactivating this website and the database that underlies it. Note that the site is now available through a secure, encrypted (https rather than http) connection. The next new tranche of current meter data will be from an OSNAP array southwest of Iceland in the Irminger Sea.
27 February 2020
OSNAP 53N is a collection of 9 moorings extending from the Labrador coast to the southwestern tip of Greenland across the mouth of the Labrador Sea. (It is also known as OSNAP West.) OSNAP stands for Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program. This dataset comprises records from 78 instruments including of current meters and SeaBird CTD recorders. You can access them here.
16 March 2019
After a long hiatus we have restarted maintenance of this website. The first new addition to the database is a mooring from the WHOTS experiment (the Woods Hole - Hawaii Ocean Time Series). This year-long mooring was installed in July 2015 and retieved during June 2016. It contained two "New Generation VMCMs" (NGVMs), and 19 SeaCats. These data are here. The mooring also contained two ADCPs that we may include here later.
29 November 2017
This archive now contains current and STD records from WHOTS-11 (Woods Hole - Hawaii Ocean Time Series). These are year-long records from Next Generation VMCMs, SeaBird SeaCats and MicroCats, and an ADCP. The mooring was installed in July 2014 and recovered in July 2015. It contained a second ADCP but data from that instrument seems not to be available. As presented here these time series have been filtered and decimated to a 30-minute time increment - which is a more useful format for many purposes. The original series, which are available on SOEST's website, have time increments rangeing from 30 minutes down to 1.25 minutes.
31 May 2017
A number of files from WHOTS-10 (Woods Hole - Hawaii Ocean Time Series) have been added to the archive. These are year-long records from Next Generation VMCMs, SeaBird SeaCats, MicroCats, and two ADCPs. The mooring was installed in July 2013 and recovered in July 2014. As provided here these time series have been filtered and decimated to a 30-minute time increment.
24 March 2017
12 current meter records from the LANDER series of Fram Strait HAUSGARTEN moorings are now in the archive here. We have not been able to find much information about this component of HAUSGARTEN, but apparently the LANDER measuremnts were made very close to the seafloor.
19 February 2017
We now have the full complement of 86 current meter and SeaBird records from 27 moorings in AWI's FEVI series. These were recorded at the HAUSGARTEN location in Fram Strait. You will find them here. Another data set from AWI's nearby LANDER moorings will join them soon.
1 January 2017
We have in hand a large number of recent current meter and SeaBird records from various moorings in Fram Strait, and as a preliminary effort have included 18 of them here in our Fram Strait collection, where they are described as "Other Fram Strait moorings". The remaining moorings (28 "FEVI" moorings and 12 "Lander" moorings) will appear here in the near future.
10 December 2016
Some years ago we included here 23 current meter records from a Woods Hole experiment called Abyssal Circulation. These were not the original measurements; they were daily averages, or possibly daily values from a more sophisticated filter. In any case, we have now been able to replace them with the original time series, which have time increments of 15 and 60 minutes. You can find the original Abyssal Circulation records here.
4 December 2016
In 2009 and again in 2010, year-long deployments of current meters were made at 3 moorings on the continental slope near Flemish Cap (which lies East of Newfoundland). 28 current records from those moorings can be found here. We have collected these data under the rubric "Flemish Cap Moorings", for lack of a formal experiment name.
3 November 2016
BENGAL was the acronym of a research project called "High-resolution temporal and spatial study of the BENthic biology and Geochemistry of a north-eastern Atlantic abyssal Locality". You can access six current meter records from this experiment here. Be aware that BENGAL took place in the Northeast Atlantic, during 1996 - 1998, and nowhere near the Bay of Bengal!
17 October 2016
We have recently populated the database with ADCP records from several year-long deployments at TOCS mooring 2.5S142E (2.5 deg South, 142 deg East). You can find our TOCS data here. We do have on hand more data from this experiment and may put these data online at some point in the future. But ADCP records often are noisy, gappy, and of questionable quality. At this point we would rather divert our attention to records from instruments like Aanderaa CMs and VMCMs, which usually are more worth the effort.
30 July 2016
The database now contains two additional year-long ADCP moorings from the Tropical Ocean Climate Studies series. The moorings were deployed during 1995 and 1996 at 2 deg S, 142 deg E. The data are here.
26 June 2016
Moving eastward into the Pacific, we have added one mooring from the TOCS (Tropical Ocean Climate Studies) collection during 2001-2002 at 2 deg North, 138 deg West. You can find and download the time series here.
2 June 2016
Fans of the Indian Ocean's Equatorial Undercurrent will be pleased to know that we have added the last portion of JAMSTEC's collection of ADCP records gathered on the Equator at 90 degrees East. This series begins in July 2002 and runs (with some gaps) through June 2012. The data are here.
10 May 2016
We have just added 32 bin series from an ADCP mooring on the Equator at 90 degrees West. The instrument was deployed in August 2005 and recovered in December 2006 as part of the Tropical Ocean Climate Study (TOCS) by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC). The TOCS data are here.
5 May 2016
The archive now contains data from 4 moorings at the westernmost Pacific Ocean TOCS site, which you can access here. The moorings were situated at 7 deg N, 127 deg E, just East of Mindanao.
31 March 2016
We have added to the TOCS pages a year's worth of data from an ADCP at 5 deg S, 95 deg E. The instrument was installed in November 2000 and recovered in October 2001 as part of the TOCS (Tropical Ocean Climate Study) experiment of JAMSTEC. The data are here.
5 March 2016
We have begun processing a large dataset from JAMSTEC, the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology. This dataset contains ADCP records from a number of sites near the Equator in the Indian Ocean and western Pacific. We will make these records available here as we are able and time permits. There are many hundreds of time series and they must be pulled out of a format in which they are not explicit. At present we can make available 3 years worth of data from a site on the Equator at 90 degrees East. The measurements are in the upper 400 meters of the water column. You will find them here.
5 December 2015
We have just added 23 current meter records from HEBBLE to the archive. HEBBLE (High Energy Benthic Boundary Layer Experiment) took place during 1983 and 1984 over the Scotia Rise with a goal of determining the effect of bottom currents on sediment transport. You can reach the current meter records here or here. The time series are mostly about 17 months long.
17 November 2015
The final installment of data from AWI's Fram Strait moorings, consisting of 43 current meter and SeaBird recordings from mooring F16, is now in the Deep Water Archive. We say "final" because we have nothing more from this experiment, though additional materials from more recent moorings may exist. If anyone has such materials please let us know (webmaster@currentmeterrecords.net).
28 October 2015
Today we have added 41 current meter and SeaBird records from Fram Strait mooring F15, which you can access here. This mooring was near the center of the strait.
8 October 2015
The data from Fram Strait moorings F-13 and F-14 can now be found here. Like moorings F-11 and F-12 these two moorings were discontinued after the summer of 2000.
11 September 2015
Current meter and SeaBird records from Fram Strait moorings F-11 and F-12 are now available here. These two sites were occupied from the summer of 1997 through summer of 2000, but were discontinued after September 2000.
1 September 2015
The current meter and SeaBird records from Fram Strait mooring F-10 are now available here. At this point there are some 569 current meter and SeaBird records in the Deep Water Archive - with more to come. Most of them are about a year long; some of the moorings were in place for 2 years. It is exceptionally clean data with the exception of the salinity time series, most of which contain long linear interpolations.
1 August 2015
The current meter and SeaBird records from Fram Strait mooring F-9 are now available here.
3 June 2015
60 current meter and SeaBird records from Fram Strait mooring F-8 have just been put into the archive here.
4 May 2015
We have added 4 current meter records from JAMSTEC's moorings at a site in the Kuroshio Extension. These moorings carried mostly various types of temperature, pressure, and/or conductivity sensors but only 5 current meters, one of which failed. The current records are here.
4 April 2015
On this glorious Spring day the sun is shining and a flock of beautiful golden finches is clustering around the bird feeder outside your webmaster's window; and - this is also good - he has put some data from AWI's Fram Strait mooring F7 into the archive here.
19 March 2015
Data from Fram Strait mooring F6 are now available here or through a search on experiment name here.
26 February 2015
Current meter and SeaBird records from Fram Strait mooring F5 are now in the archive. You can access them here or by searching here on experiment name (Fram Strait) or other descriptive parameters.
29 January 2015
A new series of current meter and SeaBird CTD records from the Fram Strait collection is now in the database here. They are from Mooring F4, which was occupied from 1997 through 2011. Reformatting these records and adding them to this archive has been a slow process, largely because of the unique, complex and somewhat difficult format that AWI has chosen for them. Nevertheless, we hope to move on to the remaining Fram Strait moorings (F5, F6, . . .) in coming days.
2 January 2015
We have just added 60 Seabird and current meter records from Mooring F3 in Fram Strait. They are here. Considering the exotic and intricate format in which AWI has stored these data, it will be a long while before we can extract and reformat the remaining 13 moorings (times 13 years) but we expect to do it over the next several months. We have been unable to find a way to automate the process, so it is slow work.
8 December 2014
Moving North from the VEINS moorings, we have acquired current meter and SeaBird records from 14 moorings in Fram Strait, which lies between Greenland in the West and Svalbard in the East. Data from two of these moorings, involving 104 files, is now available here. In time, as we prepare the remaining files, they will appear here. These moorings were deployed by scientists at the Alfred Wegener Institute.
14 November 2014
This archive has for some years contained nearly 180 current meter records produced as part of the VEINS project. (VEINS = Variability of Exchanges in the Northern Seas.) For a reason that is no longer apparent, we never produced a quick search table for these records. But we do have one now and it is here. This collection was taken from moorings in the North Atlantic, Denmark Strait, Greenland Sea and Norwegian Sea.
18 September 2014
We have begun to include VACM records from the equatorial Pacific at 95 degrees West. As they appear you will be able to find them here. They are from a number of named experiments but we are grouping them together under the rubric EPOCS, which stands for Equatorial Pacific Ocean Current Studies.
4 September 2014
Our WHOTS (Woods Hole-Hawaii Ocean Time Series experiment) archive is now complete through WHOTS-9 with the addition of four NGVM (Next Generation Vector-Measuring Current Meter) records from WHOTS-8 and WHOTS-9. The four records are available here in the larger WHOTS collection, or here individually.
24 August 2014
We have added to the archive another group of ADCP records from WHOTS (the Woods Hole-Hawaii Ocean Time Series experiment). These records are from the WHOTS-9 mooring, which contained 2 upward-looking ADCPs. It was installed in June 2012 and retrieved in July 2013. Like earlier WHOTS moorings, this one contained two NGVMs (Next Generation Vector Measuring Current Meters) but we have been unable to obtain the data from these instruments - which is also the case for the WHOTS-8 mooring that preceded WHOTS-9. You will find the WHOTS ADCP data here. The WHOTS-9 records, which were recorded with a 10-minute time increment, have been filtered and subsampled to reduce extraneous noise. The filtered records have a 30-minute time increment.
12 July 2014
The archive now contains ADCP records from WHOTS-8, the 8th consecutive deployment of the WHOTS (Woods Hole - Hawaii Ocean Time Series) moorings. These records, originally recorded with a time increment of 10 minutes, have been filtered and decimated and have a 30-minute increment. The mooring was installed in July 2011. It contained two ADCPs, one of which ran until 22 December 2011, the other until 10 January 2012.
13 June 2014
The archive's most recent acquisition comprises 50 ADCP records from WHOI's Monitoring Indonesian Throughflow experiment. A single mooring was installed in 2006, recovered and reinstalled in 2009, and finally recovered in 2011.
18 April 2014
The database now contains 32 Aanderaa RCM5 and RCM8 records from CSIRO's Sub-Antarctic Zone (SAZ) Project. These records span the interval from 1997 through 2010. You can access them here.
14 March 2014
We have added 19 new current records to our RAMA collection, which you can access here. They are from moorings at 1.5 deg S, 80.5 deg E and 8.5 deg S, 106.7 deg E.
3 March 2014
We have just included 30 current meter records from the Sea of Japan. Although these records date from 2011-2012 they are from a mooring that has been occupied continuously since 1996. (We do not have the data that pre-date 2011.) You will find the 30 records here.
19 February 2014
The final 4 current meter records (from mooring MOVE 5) are now in the database. So far, we have included here only current meter records from MOVE. However, all of the moorings contained numerous Microcats and other types of temperature, pressure and conductivity loggers. We may make these data available here later if time permits. MOVE is here.
4 February 2014
36 new current records have been added to our MOVE collection. These are from the 4th MOVE mooring site. Most have a time increment of 2 hours, but those from the most recent two deployments (June 2009 through April 2013) have a 20-minute increment.
16 January 2014
Our MOVE collection (MOVE = Meridional Overturning Variability Experiment) has been augmented with 52 current meter records (here) from the 3rd MOVE mooring site, spanning the period from January 2000 through April 2013.
18 December 2013
We have added 60 Aanderaa current meter records from MOVE (Meridional Overturning Variability Experiment) which took place in the subtropical west Atlantic. These 60 records are from two of the MOVE mooring sites. Data from the remaining sites will be made available as we process them. You can reach MOVE here
10 November 2013
Daily values of u, v, temperature, and in some cases pressure from the LOTUS experiment (the Long Term Upper Ocean Study) have been available at this site for many years. We recently acquired a more finely grained version of the same data set, with a 15-minute time increment. Both versions are now available here. These data were originally recorded with time increments of 3.75, 7.5, and 15 minutes. Thus some of the 15-minute data, like the daily values, were obtained by filtering the original measurements. You can find both data sets here.
9 October 2013
We have placed an additional 14 current meter records in the NIO collection. The instruments were in place from September 2006 to December 2007, at 3 locations on the equator. You can find them here.
15 September 2013
Continuing with the Indian Ocean, we have added 14 new current meter records from 3 moorings on the Equator. You will find them here.
22 August 2013
Our Indian Ocean collection has been augmented with 4 Aanderaa RCM records from 2 moorings in the Northern Arabian Sea, made during 1993-1994 as part of JGOFS. They are here.
8 August 2013
Our RAMA collection, which you can find here, now contains 6 additional current meter records, all of them made at a depth of 10 meters. This collection is by no means all of the current records made during RAMA, but is all (of sufficient length) that we have been able to acquire.
31 July 2013
We have put 2 additional current meter records into the oddly-named Pirata collection. The instruments were in place from July 2009 through May 2010 at 4N, 23W and at 12N, 23W. You can access them here.
29 July 2013
The Marine Light - Mixed Layer Experiment (MLML) took place in the subarctic, about 275 miles South of Iceland, during 1991. Among other results it produced 20 current velocity records and 16 temperature records, which we have reformatted and included here. You can also reach these data by searching here on experiment name (MLML) or other descriptive parameters.
17 July 2013
30 bin records from the 2007-2008 deployment at MBARI's M2 mooring are now available here. Although we have on hand ADCP data from two additional years at M2 (2009-2010 and 2010-2011) we will not include them online because of fragmentation and a shifting time base.
1 July 2013
ADCP data from the MOOS mooring that was deployed in April 2008 is now available here.
25 June 2013
Another year of the MOOS ADCP data has been added to the database here. The instrument was in the water from March 2006 through April 2007.
15 June 2013
35 bin records from another of the MOOS project's M2 moorings have been added here. The instrument (an ADCP) was in the water from 26 May 2005 through 30 March 2006. As with all of these ADCP records the time series are increasingly noisy as the separation between the echo bins and the instrument increases, so only the 35 closest bins have been included here. Parenthetically, we would like to add that this experiment offers abundant evidence (if more were needed) that the ADCP is not a good substitute for conventional current meters such as the VMCM or Aanderaa instruments.
5 June 2013
Another of the MOOS project's M2 moorings has been added to the database here. The instrument (an ADCP) was in the water from 8 April 2004 through 19 May 2005.
25 May 2013
We have added 10 current records to our EPOCS/TOGA collection at 165 East. These records are from 1986, 1997, 1998 and 1999. You will find them here.
20 May 2013
The 43 shallowest bins from a downward facing ADCP at MBARI's MOOS Mooring M2 during April 2001 - May 2002 have been placed in the database here.
14 May 2013
Another year's worth of ADCP data from MBARI's Mooring M2 has been added to the Deep Water Current Meter Database here. This deployment ran from May 2002 through April 2003. We have included 37 bins from 16 meters depth to 304 meters. Deeper bins were of poorer quality.
29 April 2013
ADCP data from the July 2003 deployment at MOOS (MBARI Ocean Observing System) Mooring M2 have been added to the database here.
22 April 2013
ADCP data from the May 1999 deployment at MOOS (MBARI Ocean Observing System) Mooring M3 have been added to the database here.
20 April 2013
Those interested in WOCE component ACM24 should note that we have modified the current meter record from 3915m at Mooring 4 (Accession 2306). We have information that the speeds after 0100 26 May 1994 were copied over from the instrument above (why?) so we have terminated speed and direction at that point.
17 April 2013
This database already contains current records (here) and (here) from deep water at the foot of Monterey Canyon. We are adding to this with data from MBARI's MOOS moorings. You can now find ADCP data from one of the MOOS moorings here. Current records from other MOOS moorings will become available as we process them.
12 April 2013
The EPOCS/TOGA collection has been further expanded with the addition of 25 current records from 140 degrees West. These records were made with VACMs or VMCMs during 1984 and 1985. You will find them here.
8 April 2013
There are 7 new current meter records in the 140 deg West portion of our EPOCS/TOGA collection. The moorings were in the water from 11 October 1985 through 10 March 1986. The data are available here.
5 April 2013
We have corrected an error in the instrument depth in some files in our EPOCS/TOGA collection. The files had been entered into the database with depths 10 times too small! The fault was ours for misreading some of NODC's format 015 files from the mid-80s. Fortunately these files have been in the database for a comparatively short time. They are from moorings on the equator at 100 deg West and 124.5 deg West. You can access them (with the correct depths) here and here. The files have accession numbers 7992 through 7997 and 8100 through 8143.
20 March 2013
Some time ago we added a number of NGVM and SeaBird files from the WHOTS (Woods Hole - Hawaii Ocean Time Series) experiment. Those moorings also contained ADCPs. We did not include the ADCP data at that time because of their poor condition. Since then we have cleaned up some of the ADCP files, bridging short gaps and filtering out noise, and are now making hourly versions available. You can access these files here or by searching here on experiment name (WHOTS) or the name of the PI (R.Lukas).
10 December 2012
The ancient webmaster, who celebrated his 77th birthday today, has added a few new files to the EPOCS 124.5 West collection. These are VACM (or possibly VMCM) data. With one exception the files are 2 years in length and were pieced together from consecutive 6-month deployments that occurred between October 1983 and October 1985. The original 15-minute time series were filtered and subsampled to make series with a 60-minute time increment. The files are here.
14 November 2012
The Stratus experiment (a part of EPIC) took place in the southeastern tropical Pacific, beginning in 2000 and continuing today. We have obtained 9 year-long current records made at a nominal depth of 10 meters. As presented here, the time series have a 30-minute time increment. You can find these 9 records here. The moorings contained other, deeper current meters and hopefully we will be able to present them here later.
16 October 2012
We have added 93 individual bin files from ADCPs deployed on EPOCS moorings on the Equator at 147 East. You will find the entire 147 East set here. We provide these data with a warning, however. Like much ADCP data these files came to us gappy and noisy. We have bridged the shorter gaps (1, 2, or 3 missing values) with linear interpolations. Files with longer gaps have not been included. We have not been able, however, to do much about random noise, which does appear to be present in places.
25 August 2012
Our collection of current meter records from equatorial moorings at or near 110 degrees west has been expanded by the addition of 30 VACM records made during 1984 and 1985. This set comprises 3 consecutive deployments, each about 6 months in length. You can reach the data here.
15 August 2012
We have added 20 current meter records to our EPOCS collection. These measurements were made in 1984 and 1985 on the equator at 124.5 deg W. Each record is about 6 months long. You can find them here.
11 August 2012
A set of 8 current meter records made during a joint OSU - MBARI project has come to light. These moorings were in Montery Canyon. You can access the data here. You may be interested in considering these records along with those obtained in the same location by the US Geological Survey during a later experiment.
10 August 2012
Beginning in 1965 (early in the history of the OSU Buoy Group and before we acquired the expertise and instrumentation needed for long term deep sea mooring work) we deployed several arrays in comparatively shallow water along the Oregon and California coasts, and in a few other areas. For the most part the resulting time series were too short or too shallow to meet the criteria for inclusion in this Deep Water Archive. Nevertheless, as a result of a request, we have put these data online in a separate location. You can download these files in either OSU's stranger format or in netCDF format. They are available here.
1 August 2012
We have added 20 current meter records to the SEQUAL collection. Although the moorings were about 36 degrees north of the equator (note that SEQUAL stands for Seasonal Response of the Equatorial Atlantic) they are described as part of SEQUAL/FOCUS in NODC's holdings, where we found them. You can access them here. This particular array also contained a number of moorings that did not meet our duration criterion and we have not included them here. (To be included a mooring must be in place 6 months or longer - although we sometimes relax this requirement.)
22 July 2012
Our "Atlantic miscellaneous" category now contains 13 additional current meter records from 1973 and 1974. We know very little about them, except that they are from deep water SE of Cape Cod. They may be from various Woods Hole experiments. You can find them here.
5 July 2012
We have added two additional current meter records to the Monterey Canyon collection. These records are about a year and a half long and were made on a mooring that was deployed in May 1995 and recovered during August 1996.
2 June 2012
The latest addition to this database is a collection of 115 files from the joint SOEST-WHOI experiment known as WHOTS (the Woods Hole - Hawaii Ocean Time Series experiment). This experiment included a series of year-long deployments 100 km north of Oahu beginning in 2004 and extending through the present. You can download filtered versions of these time series (with a 30-minute time increment) here or by searching here on the experiment name, WHOTS.
7 April 2012
60 VACM and SeaBird SBE-37 records from WHOI's ongoing Line W are now in the database. This line of moorings lies across the path of the Gulf Stream southeast of Cape Cod. The earliest of the files provided here dates from 2001 and the most recent is from 2007-2008. You can reach the files here or by searching here on the experiment name, Line W, or the name of the PI, J. Toole.
3 March 2012
Today's addition to the database comprises 41 VMCM and VACM records from FASINEX (the Frontal Air-Sea Interface Experiment) which took place in the subtropical convergence zone southwest of Bermuda in 1986. You can reach them here. These data were recorded on 5 "surface moorings" (moorings with a meteorological buoy at the sea surface). We hope to add records from 2 longer-duration moorings that lacked met buoys if we can find them.
26 January 2012
During 1982, 1983 and 1984 the USGS placed a number of moorings over the continetal shelf and slope southeast of Cape Cod. We have taken 25 current records from the slope moorings and included them in this database. You can access them here or by searching here on the experiment name "USGS Shelf/Slope Study".
27 December 2011
The database now contains 15 VACM and VTCT records from the Montery Canyon Project of the US Geological Survey. These measurements originally were made with a time increment of 15 minutes. The versions here have been filtered and are hourly. You can download them here or by doing a detailed search here on "Montery Canyon Project".
2 December 2011
We have added 25 additional current meter records to the existing Deep Water Dump Site 106 collection. You can download them here. You can also reach them by searching here on experiment name. The moorings were on the continental slope southeast of Long Island
23 November 2011
Six current meter records from two moorings on Karin Ridge have been placed in the Deep Water Archive. This site is in the central Pacific southwest of Hawaii. You can reach the data here or by searching on the experiment name Karin Ridge or the PI name M.Noble here.
19 November 2011
We have added bin records from two long ADCP deployments in the TOGA/EPOCS/TAO series of experiments. Each is about 5 years in length and was pieced together at PMEL from shorter deployments mostly about a year long. We have discarded bins that were too noisy to be useful and have used predictive interpolations to bridge the gaps between the year-long deployments. The gaps all were shorter than 36 hours.
The new records are from the equatorial sites at 110 West and 140 West. We do have in hand long records from some of the other equatorial sites but have decided not to include them here because of quality problems.
You can access these data here or by searching here on the experiment name EPOCS. (Note that for convenience we have gathered a number of related experiments on and near the Pacific equator uner the common title EPOCS, which stands for Equatorial Pacific Ocean Current Studies.)
20 October 2011
The Deep Water Database now contains 60 current meter records from the Ocean Margin Exchange Project (OMEX), which was a multidisciplinary effort to study the physical, chemical and biological processes at the ocean margin of the Northwest European continental shelf. You can reach these records here or with a detailed search on the experiment name OMEX. OMEX began in 1993 and concluded in 1999.
We note parenthetically that BODC has made a great deal of information from this experiment available in a set of CDs. The 60 files included here are available in that set, in plain text - which we were able to read and translate to our prefered format. Other files appear to have a nonstandard netCDF format. We were able to open these files with Unidata's ncdump program but found insufficient global information in them to render them useful. These files appear to be inaccessible to anyone who cannot install a Microsoft database and other Microsoft software available on the BODC disk set; as a Unix and Linux shop we were unable to do so.
25 August 2011
The Peru Currents Study produced 83 current meter records. It was undertaken during the 1980s by the OSU Buoy Group as part of a series of investigations into eastern boundary upwelling regimes. Although some of the time series do not meet the criteria for inclusion in this database (they are too short or in shallow water) we have included all of them, for the sake of completeness. You can reach them here or by doing a detailed search on "Peru Currents Study" or "R.L.Smith".
20 July 2011
Six year-long VACM records from three moorings that were placed over a mid-Atlantic seamount have been added here. These were WHOI moorings 633, 634, and 635, installed in November 1977 and recovered in December 1978.
13 July 2011
We have added 9 new current meter records to the 1993 portion of the Vents archive, which is here. The Vents experiments measured deep currents in the vicinity of seafloor volcanic vents in the northeast Pacific. With this addition, there are 205 current meter records from Vents in this archive.
10 July 2011
The database now contains 27 current records from the Arabian Sea Mixed Layer Dynamics Experiment. This experiment took place during 1994-95 in deep water southeast of Oman. Most of the records are about a year in length. You can reach the data here or by doing a search on Arabian Sea Experiment.
16 June 2011
7 VACM records from POLYMODE have been added to this table, and 11 other VACM records have been added here near the top of the table (they are from WHOI moorings 616 through 620). The latter group may also be from POLYMODE but we haven't any definite information on that score.
2 June 2011
The latest addition to this database consists of 52 current meter records from the MASAR experiment, which took place over the continental slope and rise off the US mid-Atlantic coast. These records were made by SAIC under contract from the US Mineral Management Service. The quality of the data set is somewhat mixed, but we have improved it as well as we could by (1) removing useless records or portions of records, (2) replacing some linear interpolations with predictive interpolations, and (3) removing obvious error spikes. The MASAR data is here.
29 April 2011
Today's addition to the database consists of 38 VACM records from WHOI's SYNOP 1 experiment. These moorings were in the water for about 2 years with a goal of learning enough about the dynamics of the Gulf Stream to make useful predictions possible. You can access the records here or by doing a search on SYNOP 1 or the names of the experiment's principal investigators (S.Worrilow and N.G.Hogg).
16 April 2011
We have added 7 current meter records from the Greenland Sea Project. (The database already contained 14 current records from this experiment.) The new records were made in the 1989-1990 season. You can reach them here.
6 April 2011
The database now contains the records from MMS/SAIC's Desoto Canyon Eddy Intrusion Study that were promised below. Again, we have excluded some records that were too short or of dubious quality. But most of the current records are here and are quite clean. You can reach them here. You will notice that most of the moorings are over the Continental Shelf, a region that we have intentionally excluded from this database. But because of the paucity of data available from the Gulf of Mexico we felt it best to include the entire array, even though only three of the moorings are from deep water.
28 December 2010
This addition to the Deep Water Archive may be useful to those interested in the BP oil spill. We have just added 218 current records from the MMS/SAIC Desoto Canyon Extension experiment. Some 183 of them are bin records from moored ADCPs and the rest are from various single-depth instruments. We excluded a number of temperature, salinity, and pressure records because of questions caused by a problematical filter that SAIC used to reduce spikiness, but we believe that the 218 records we included are clean and useful. You can access these records here.
In the not-too-distant future we will add some data from the MMS/SAIC Desoto Canyon Eddy Intrusion Study, which took place along the Shelf and Slope to the East of Desoto Canyon Extension moorings.
24 November 2010
34 additional current meter records from the MMS/SAIC Gulf of Mexico Physical Oceanography Project are now in the database. These records are from the Eastern side of the basin. (Some 44 records from the Western side already are present.) You can reach all of them here.
28 October 2010
Twelve additional current meter records from TOGA/EPOCS have been placed in the database here. These records were made on the Equator at 140 degrees West in 1987 and 1988.
23 October 2010
We have just added our first current meter records from the Gulf of Mexico. These 44 records were taken by SAIC during 1985 - 1988 as part of the US Minerals Management Service's Gulf of Mexico Physical Oceanography Program (GMPO). You can reach the data here.
9 September 2010
11 current meter records and 5 MicroCat records from the Southern Ocean have been added to the database here. These data were collected between 30 October 1997 and 16 March 1998 by an Oregon State University group with some support from the JGOFS Project.
2 August 2010
20 current meter records from EPOCS (Equatorial Pacific Ocean Climate Study) have been added to the database here. The records are from five moorings deployed on the Equator at about 110 degrees West during 1980 - 1982.
27 July 2010
The main moorings of the SEQUAL experiment ("Seasonal Response of the Equatorial Atlantic") were deployed in 1983, 1984, and 1985; but a smaller pilot project ran from February through November of 1981. We have just added 15 current meter records from that pilot project (designated "pre-SEQUAL") to the database. You can access all of the SEQUAL and pre-SEQUAL current records here.
25 July 2010
Today's addition to the database consists of 14 VACM records from the 1977-78 follow-on to GATE (GARP Atlantic Tropical Experiment). The moorings were set by a US-French group on or near the equator in the Gulf of Guinea. The data are here.
27 June 2010
We have added a number of Aanderaa, SeaBird, and ADCP records from the 2006-08 mooring of the North Pole Environmental Observatory (NPEO). You can find these data here or by searching on the experiment name NPEO here.
29 May 2010
The latest addition to the database consists of 89 year-long records from the US Southern Ocean GLOBEC project (SOGLOBEC). These include data from VACMs and various SeaBird temperature, pressure, and conductivity recorders. You can access SOGLOBEC here or by searching for SOGLOBEC in the detailed search portion of this website.
26 April 2010
The database now includes a number of current records from RAMA, which was a companion experiment to TOGA and PIRATA. RAMA took place in the equatorial Indian Ocean (hence the name). You can reach these records quickly here, or by searching for RAMA in the detailed search portion of this website.
10 April 2010
We have included current meter records from the PIRATA experiment. PIRATA was a multi-year effort during 2000 - 2009 in the equatorial Atlantic. The files contain speed, direction, u, and v. You can download these data here or do a detailed search on PIRATA. All of the records have a time increment of one hour. (The original 10 and 20 minute VACM and VMCM records have been filtered and subsampled. We used a 12 hour wide Cosine-Lanczos filter with a passband of 0 to 6 cycles/day.)
26 February 2010
The latest addition to the Current Meter Database comprises 10 records made off Evans Head on the Northeast coast of Australia. These records, which were made in 1989, have been placed here, where they can be considered along with some current meter records made along the same coast some six years earlier.
21 January 2010
Nine current meter records from SAZ97-98 have been added to the database. They are from a CSIRO experiment in the same general area as WOCE component SCM3, during the two years following SCM3. You can reach these records here or by searching here with the experiment name SAZ97-98. (SAZ stands for Sub-Antarctic Zone.)
One might wonder why we include here data from CSIRO, when that data is readily available to anyone through CSIRO's Data Trawler website. There are at least a couple of reasons. First, it is nice to have a very broad (i.e., world wide) selection of deep water current meter data available at a single site - which is our mandate here. But second, and perhaps more important, the format in which the Data trawler makes records available is anything but user-friendly. Not to put too fine a point on it, the format is extremely difficult to work with. We think our own stranger format, on the other hand, is about as simple and easy a format as any we have seen. We believe that the format in which data is archived should not be a stumbling block to its use.
5 January 2010
We have made some changes to the database software. First, the error messages you get during a "detailed search" (hopefully there will be none) are more attractive and in some cases more informative.
Second, the form you fill out to define a geographic region to search is more useful. The old form allowed you only to choose among a number of predefined areas, such as "North Pacific" or "Equatorial Atlantic". And even then, as we have noticed, it did not capture all the mooring sites it should have. The search algorithm, which dated from the very early years of the WWW, was not very good.
This algorithm has been replaced by one that is much better, that we think will find all the moorings it should. Gone are the predefined regions; instead you will define an arbitrary region by entering its minimum and maximum latitudes, and its minimum and maximum longitudes.
30 November 2009
The NC Field experiment occupied 15 mooring sites in the Gulf Stream off Cape Hatteras. Currents were recorded over the continental shelf and slope during many short consecutive deployments over a two-year period from February 1992 through February 1994. Gaps between deployments varied from a few hours to a few days. You can reach these data here or by searching here with the experiment name NC Field. We have where possible joined these records by bridging the short gaps between them with linear and predictive interpolations.
13 August 2009
The database now contains 12 Aanderaa RCM4 records from the Gulf of Alaska Recirculation Study (GARS) conducted by the University of Alaska in 1986 - 88. You can access them here.
29 June 2009
We have added 5 new files to Vents 94 and have cleared up some confusion by removing a file that had mistakenly been included in Vents 94. (It belongs in Vents 95 and a copy has, in fact, been there all along.)
1 May 2009
The database now contains current meter and Seacat SBE records from the 4th year of the University of Washington's North Pole Environmental Observatory (NPEO). You can access them here.
8 February 2009
We have just added 89 current meter records from WOCE component SCM2 to the Quick Search portion of the database. You can find them here in the last two tables of the Quick Search results. This makes a total of 203 records from SCM2 in the database. (Actually, these 89 additional records have long been available here via the Detailed Search, but for some reason we forgot to include them in the Quick Search.)
31 December 2008
The AWI Arctic collection now contains 7 thermistor chain records from moorings in the Greenland Sea.
26 December 2008
21 current meter records have been added to the AWI Arctic collection, making 78 in all for that group. We suspect that some of these records were taken during named experiments (such as the Greenland Sea Project) but do not have enough information to identify them as such. Gerd Rohardt is given here as the Principal Investigator for all of these records because he is so designated in AWI's own archive where the records also reside. We do not know whether that identification is accurate.
23 December 2008
We have added 5 current meter records from 2 moorings in PMEL's Greenland Sea Project. That makes a total of 15 records from that project. You can find them here.
17 December 2008
You will find a new page here that contains 57 current meter records obtained by the Alfred Wegener Institute in the Arctic Ocean. Several of these records have been in the "Miscellaneous Atlantic" portion of the database for some time, but we have moved them to the Arctic Ocean section - which is more appropriate since the moorings were north of the Arctic Circle. You can also reach these records by doing a search on "AWI Arctic moorings".
21 November 2008
We have added 24 current records collected during various expeditions of the Alfred Wegener Institute. Five of the moorings lie in a line along latitude 75 South, in the Weddell Sea. The remaining records are from elsewhere in the Weddell Sea. You can reach them here, or by doing a search on "AWI Antarctic moorings".
11 November 2008
19 current meter records from T.J.Muller's ESTOC experiment have been added to the database. You can reach them here. The records are from a mooring north of the Canary Islands that was occupied during three successive years (September 1994 through September 1997).
4 November 2008
Rejoice! America's long dark night is almost over.
3 October 2008
A few new current meter records have been added to the database, all of them obtained from CSIRO. Seven are from within the Indonesian archipelago: three from a single mooring in the Halmahera Sea, and four from a mooring in Maluku Strait (AKA Molucca Sea). These seven records have been grouped together here.
We also have two current meter records from a mooring near Heard Island, which lies on the Kerguelen Plateau in the south-central Indian Ocean. To access these records, do a search on the experiment name "Heard Island" here.
28 June 2008
We have just added 74 records from the North Pole Environmetal Observatory of the University of Washington. These include records from Aanderaa current meters, Seabird TPC recorders, and RDI ADCPs. They are from moorings placed very close to the north pole during 3 succesive years (2001-02, 2002-03, and 2003-04). You can access these data here.
7 May 2008
The database now contains 22 current meter and SBE records from moorings deployed along the Lomonosov Ridge as part of the High Latitude Dynamics project. You can reach them here. This is our second data set from High Latitude Dynamics; the other consists of records from the Beaufort Sea.
23 April 2008
We have just added to the database 48 current meter records made along the Equator between longitude 76 East and 93 East. These records were made by the mooring team of the Indian National Institute of Oceanography, as part of Ocean Observing System (OOS) program of the Indian Department of Ocean Development. You can reach the data here or by doing a search on EQCM (the experiment name) or V.S.N.Murty (the name of the PI).
4 March 2008
For some time the database has contained a number of current meter records from PMEL's VENTS experiment. This portion of the VENTS program took place in the northeast Pacific near several undersea volcanic vents, and was an attempt to map the outflow plumes of the vents. Today we have added 57 VENTS current meter records to the existing collection in our database. The new records are from 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, and 1998. You can access them here.
9 February 2008
We have added 18 current meter records to the DOMES collection. DOMES stands for "Deep Ocean Mining and Environmental Study" and was conducted by NOAA during 1975 - 1977 to determine possible effects of mining manganese nodules on the seafloor. Most of the 18 records are only 2 months in length but complement the 4 longer records that our archive has contained for some years. You can reach DOMES here. Also, we have fixed some depth errors in the 4 previous records.
2 February 2008
The database now contains 33 current meter and TSR records from the Beaufort Sea. They were made during a phase of the High Latitude Dynamics experiment, and are our first dataset from the Arctic Ocean. You can reach them here or here.
13 January 2008
Two more components of ACE 83 have been added to the database, CSIRO's Cape Howe and Newcastle sections - 23 Aanderaa current meter records in all. To reach them, use the links in the 31 December entry immediately below. We are aware of two additional short sections that were part of ACE 83, but since they occurred entirely in relatively shallow water over the continental shelf we have not included them here.
Most of the unfiltered ACE 83 current meter records, as we received them from CSIRO, contained time series described as pressure. Unfortunately we were unable to determine the units of the pressure measurements and have not included them here.
31 December 2007
Fifteen Aanderaa current meter records have just been added to our ACE 83 collection. ACE stands for Australian Coastal Experiment; it took place in 1983-84 off Australia's east coast. The new records are from CSIRO's Stanwell Park component of the experiment (and are new only in the sense that they are new to the Buoy Group database.) You can access them here or by searching on the experiment name "Australian Coastal Experiment". Most of the records are about 6 months in length.
28 November 2007
Eight Aanderaa current meter records taken by CSIRO over the Lord Howe Rise during 1989 - 1990 are available. The records are seven+ months in length and are from two moorings. You can reach them here or by doing a search on the experiment name "Lord Howe Rise 89". Lord Howe Rise is situated in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand.
17 September 2007
The last moorings of the AnSlope (Antarctic Slope) experiment have been out of the water for more than two years, and we are now able to include here all of the mooring data - including the current meter and Seacat time series. You can access these data here or by doing a search on the experiment name Anslope.
12 September 2007
We have added 12 year-long current meter records from Makassar Strait to the database. These records were obtained by CSIRO during 1993 - 1994. You may be interested in comparing them with curent records taken somewhat farther south in the Strait during the Arlindo experiment. Click here to access the CSIRO data and here to access the Arlindo data.
2 September 2007
The database now contains 4 current meter records from Deep Water Dump Site 106. This location, on the Continetal Slope 106 miles SE of New York City, was used for dumping of sewage sludge from 1986 through 1992. Two current meter moorings were installed by the USGS in order to understand the transport and effects of sludge at the site. Go here to access the data.
25 August 2007
We have just added 26 year-long records from the Labrador Sea to the database. Most of the 26 are from SBE Seacats and two types of current meter. We have included them here under the rubric "Labrador Deep Convection". They were extracted from a group of CDF files provided by Friedrich Schott of IFM Kiel. (These files also contained data from doppler profilers. The doppler records lacked information on bin depths, so we were not able to include them here.) You can access the 26 records that we did include here or by doing a search on the experiment name "Labrador Deep Convection".
29 July 2007
The pressure records from Tom Whitworth's Antarctic Circumpolar Current Choke Point Pressure Monitoring program are now available here to a precision of 0.001 decibar. Initially we had provided only 0.1 db precison, which is not fine enough for many purposes. (Thanks to Richard Ray for pointing this out.) The original pressure records, as uploaded from the Seacat CTDs had a precision of 0.001 db, and the records on this website now have the full precision.
10 December 2006
Not only is it the 71st birthday of the webmaster, who still breathes, but he has added a number of current records from the Gulf of Alaska to the database. The records are from several experiments but are subsumed under PMEL's rubric FOCI, which stands for Fisheries-Oceanography Cordinated Investigations. You can reach this latest addition here or by doing a search on the experiment name FOCI.
28 October 2006
We have added 9 Aanderaa current records from three moorings off the northeast coast of Greenland. We are unsure of the experiment name, so have placed them in the Miscellaneous Atlantic category. You can identify them there by their position (approximately 72 degrees North, 8 degrees West) and dates (June 1987 to June 1988). The mooring names are GS-1, GS-2, and GS-3.
13 October 2006
93 current meter records from the SEQUAL experiment have been added to the database. You can access them here. SEQUAL (which stands for "Seasonal Response of the Equatorial Atlantic") was a joint effort of WHOI and IFREMER during 1983 - 1985. These data are of exceptionally good quality.
The database now contains more than 5000 records from deep sea moorings. Most were made by current meters but the archive also includes time series from temperature recorders, Seacat TPC recorders, pressure recorders, etc.
Return to the the previous page.
21 September 2006
Throughout its history the OSU Buoy Group implemented a policy of publishing a data report after each experiment, as soon as the data had been processed. During the Buoy Group's final years these data reports, which contained mooring descriptions, data statistics and plots, were published electronically on the Group's website. That portion of the website has now been fully implemented here. It includes seven data reports, including the Buoy Group's most recent (and final) experiment, AnSlope. Since the data reports contain more information about each experiment than can be found elsewhere in this archive, you may wish to look there first. All of the data reports contain downloadable copies of the data files (the time series).
Return to the the previous page.
9 September 2006
We have just placed here some of the mooring data from AnSlope. AnSlope (Antarctic Slope) was a 2-year experiment beginning in 2003. Its goal was to examine and quantify water that sinks at high southern latitudes and flows down the Antarctic slope to contribute to northward-moving deep water masses. Numerous moorings contained current meters and SBE Seacats. Year-long moorings were set in March 2003 and again in March 2004. We have included here brief descriptions of the moored instruments including statistics from the time series. The time series themselves have not yet been released to the public domain and probably will not be available for another year.
UPDATE 17 September 2007: The time series (current meter records, SBE Seacat records, etc.) are now available on this website for download.
Return to the the previous page.
31 August 2006
12 new current meter records from the Vents experiment have been added to the database. Vents is a multidisciplinary examination of the region surrounding a number of hot seafloor vents in the Northeast Pacific. The new files were recorded in 1999, 2000, and 2001.
Return to the the previous page.
24 April 2006
We have just added new data from the Abrupt Topography experiment to the website. These data are from the ADCP that was deployed at Mooring R2 on the flank of Fieberling Guyot. This instrument recorded velocities from 47 bins, each of which was 4 meters in vertical extent. The top two bins were of poor quality and have not been included here.
At this point the database contains records from Mooring C which was at the top of the seamount, from B2 and B3 which were in deep water northwest of the seamount, and from R2. We do NOT have any data from at least 5 other moorings known to have been deployed - F2, F3, F4, F5 and R3. If you have these data or know where they can be obtained please contact webmaster[at]cmrecords[dot]net so that they can be added to this database. (Please note that our email address has been obfuscated to foil spammers.)
Return to the the previous page.
2 September 2005
The deep water archive was maintained for several years by the OSU Buoy Group. However,the Buoy Group has disbanded and no longer exists. Several of its members have retired and others have moved on.
We believe that by making available a large world-wide collection current meter records from deep-water moorings we have provided a useful service to the research and educational community. We are aware of no other large, historical, searchable, high quality collection of downloadable current records on the web. We would like to continue making these data available.
To this end, when it became clear that we would not be able to maintain the database indefinitely at Oregon State University, we made arrangements to mirror this collection at the present site, which we expect to remain on the web for the long term.
We intend to continue adding new current records as we acquire them. If you have any current meter records (including ADCP records) that are from deep water (i.e., beyond the continental shelves) and 6 months or more in length that you would like to include, please contact us.
Return to the the previous page.