Absolutely referenced geostrophic velocity and transport on a section across the North Atlantic Current

• Main Authors: Christopher S. Meinen, D. Randolph Watts, Olph Watts, R. Allyn Clarke
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: north atlantic current; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.42.1507; http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/~meinen/thesispaper1.ps

A transect of CTD profiles crossing the North Atlantic Current (NAC) along WOCE line ACM6 near 42.5 ffi N during August 1--7, 1993 provides geostrophic shear velocity profiles which were absolutely referenced using simultaneous POGO transport float measurements and velocity measurements from a ship--mounted acoustic doppler current profiler (ADCP). The NAC absolute transport was 112 \Sigma 23 \Theta 10 6 m 3 s \Gamma1 , which includes a portion of the transport of the Mann Eddy, a large permanent anticyclonic eddy commonly adjacent to the NAC. The NAC transport estimated relative to a level of no motion at the bottom would have underestimated the true total absolute transport by 20%. A surprisingly large 58 \Theta 10 6 m 3 s \Gamma1 flowed southward just inshore of the NAC. This flow, centered near 1500 dbars about 200 km offshore of the shelf--break, was fairly barotropic with a peak velocity of greater than 20 cm s \Gamma1 , and the water mass characteristics were of .