Data: MeRMEED cruise and mooring data - Vertical microstructure, CTD, vessel mounted ADCP, moored ADCP, 2016-2018

Abstract

Cruise data collected across three separate cruises MeRMEED-1 (WS16336; 1-7 December 2016), MeRMEED-2 (WS17305; 31 October - 10 November 2017) and MeRMEED-3 (WS18066; 4-16 March 2018). All cruises were aboard the R/V F. G. Walton Smith. Cruise region: 76.5W-77.2W, 26.15N-26.8N. Cruises consisted of zonal tethered vertical microstructure profiler (VMP) and vessel mounted acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) surveys, yielding sections of the turbulent dissipation rate (units: W/kg) and zonal and meridional velocity (units: m/s). The VMP used was the tethered Rockland Scientific International VMP-2000, and the ADCP was a vessel-mounted RDI 75 kHz Ocean Surveyor ADCP configured and run through the University of Hawai’i Data Acquisition System (UHDAS) software suite. The VMP was also mounted with a CTD (conductivity-temperature-depth) sensor package, including SBE-3 and SBE-4 sensors. The CTD data was processed according to the manufacturer specifications, using recommended values for the cell thermal mass coefficients (alpha=0.03 and beta=7.0). Files are named as follows: WSxxxxx_CTD.mat, WSxxxxx_vmp_all.mat and WSxxxxx_os75nb.nc for CTD, VMP and ADCP data respectively. Mooring-based data is from two 75 kHz ADCPs, one upward facing and the other downward facing, mounted at approximately 700 m on the RAPID/MOCHA (Rapid Climate Change / Meridional Overturning Circulation and Heat flux Array) mooring WB1 at 76.8W and 26.5N. This configuration gave full depth meridional and zonal velocity profiles (units: m/s) in a water depth of approximately 1300 m. The data spanned December 2015 to March 2017. The data are binned in 16 m depth bins and are bin averaged into 1 hour time bins. File name: WB1_adcp_UV_1hr.mat.