(Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 1990-09)
Blanding, Wayne R.
Pulse-like acoustic signals are transmitted from an acoustic source near Oahu to seven
receivers off the west coast of the United States for a 124-day period in 1988. Acoustic
travel-time oscillations are observed in the received signal at periods between 15 and 23
hours, which are caused by barotropic (or first or second mode baroclinic) flu ctuations
in the ocean. It is shown that these fluctuations cannot be local processes isolated to
either the source or to the receivers. It is further shown that resonant barotropic gravity
wave modes (Platzman et al., 1981) are not consistent with the data. The cause of these
flu ctuations remains unresolved, but the data and other oceanographic measurements put
many constraints on the process causing these fluctuations.
