Abstract:

Data was collected on board the R/V Pelican during Leg 2 of the 2016 spring campaign (April 8-12, 2016) in the vicinity of the Mobile Bay river plume in the northern Gulf of Mexico. River plume fronts were observed on multiple occasions. There was also a wind event which drastically changed stratification. Data in this collection: Chameleon microstructure (~4000 casts); Data collected simultaneously in other collections: shipboard flowthrough [R4.x260.000:0020], shipboard navigation [R4.x260.000:0020], shipboard meterological [R4.x260.000:0020], ADCP [R4.x260.000:0010], CTD (74 casts) [R4.x260.000:0018], Biosonics acoustics [R4.x260.000:0022], and X-Band Radar tuned to detect fronts [R4.x260.000:0021].

Suggested Citation:

Sally J. Warner, James N. Moum. 2017. Turbulence data collected in the northern Gulf of Mexico, Mobile Bay river plume, April 8-12, 2016. Distributed by: GRIIDC, Harte Research Institute, Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. doi:10.7266/N7QF8R84

Publications:

Greer, A., Shiller, A., Hofmann, E., Wiggert, J., Warner, S., … Graham, W. (2018). Functioning of Coastal River-Dominated Ecosystems and Implications for Oil Spill Response: From Observations to Mechanisms and Models. Oceanography, 31(3). doi:10.5670/oceanog.2018.302

Purpose:

High resolution Chameleon data provides a detailed view of temperature, salinity, fluorescence, and optical backscatter.

Data Parameters and Units:

CHAMELEON MICROSTRUCTURE: Temperature (°C), salinity (psu), turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate (W/kg), fluorescence (volts), 880nm backscatter (volts), Turbidity (FTU), Potential density (sigmat, kg/m3), Depth (m), Latitude, Longitude

Methods:

We provide data that has been processed from its original raw format into a matlab file (.mat) which has been quality controlled. The .mat file which contains the structure "cham". Within cham are the following datafields: cham = time: [1x3848 double] depth: [201x1 double] lon: [1x3848 double] lat: [1x3848 double] temp: [201x3848 double] sal: [201x3848 double] sigma: [201x3848 double] scat: [201x3848 double] flr: [201x3848 double] readme: [15x76 char] Within cham.readme, information is provided about each datatype: ans = Chameleon data from concorde16 processed on 13-Oct-2016 11:37:10 by run_concorde16 data processed into 10cm vertical bins time = matlab datenum lon = longitude lat = latitude depth = binned depths that have been corrected by 30cm to account for difference in depth between pressure sensor and other sensors at the tip of chameleon [m] temp = temperature from second T sensor [°C] (T2 better than T1!!) sal = salinity [psu] sigma = potential density (calculated from THETA, SAL and P) [kg/m^3 - 1000] scat = 880 nm optical backscatter [Formazin Turbudity Units; FTU] flr = fluorometer [volts]

Instruments:

Chameleon is owned, operated and maintained by the Ocean Mixing Group at Oregon State University.

Individual Files: