Valdes James R.

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Valdes
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James R.
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Start date: 1986 × End date: 1989 ×

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  • Technical Report
    Site L SOFAR float experiment, 1982-1985
    (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 1987-12) Price, James F. ; McKee, Theresa K. ; Owens, W. Brechner ; Valdes, James R.
    Lagrangian measurements of low frequency currents in the vicinity of the Gulf Stream and its recirculation region in the western Sargasso Sea were made by tracking SOFAR floats. These floats were tracked using acoustic time of arrival information from an array of five Autonomous Listening Stations {ALSs) which were moored in the western Sargasso Sea. The ALSs performed almost flawlessly, returning over 90 percent of the possible data. Floats were released in three deployments of seven floats each in November 1982, February 1983, and June 1983. The floats were launched in initially coherent arrays (approximately 20 km spacing) at 34°N, 70°W, Site "L", and were ballasted for 700 m depth. The SOFAR floats themselves functioned with somewhat less than expected reliability; four floats failed fairly soon after launch, and several other floats suffered failures of their temperature and pressure telemetry. The majority of the SOFAR floats launched in this program produced long, and interesting trajectories. These new data will be valuable for estimating first order flow statistics in the dynamically important recirculation region, for visualizing interactions between the Gulf Stream and the New England Seamount Chain, and for estimating one and two particle diffusivities in a region of very high eddy energy.
  • Technical Report
    FASINEX (Frontal Air-Sea Interaction Experiment) moored instrumentation
    (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 1989-02) Trask, Richard P. ; Dean, Jerome P. ; Valdes, James R. ; Marquette, Craig D.
    In 1986, FASINEX, a Frontal Air-Sea Interaction Experiment, a multi-investigator cooperative experiment, was conducted to study the role of horizontal variability in air-sea interaction in the persistent front formed in the subtropical convergence zone south of Bermuda. Aimed at investigating all aspects of the atmospheric and oceanic variables related to the formation and maintenance of the front, an array of meteorological and current meter moorings was deployed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Buoy Group in 5400 meters of water . Two subsurface current meter moorings were deployed in October, 1984; five surface meteorological and current meter moorings and four Profiling Current Meter (PCM) moorings were set in January 1986 . All except one PCM mooring, which was lost, were recovered in June 1986. This report discusses the extensive preparations of, and modifications to, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Buoy Group instruments placed on the five surface moorings. The equipment included 30 vector measuring current meters, ten vector averaging current meters and five vector averaging wind recorders .
  • Technical Report
    SOFAR float Mediterranean outflow experiment data from the second year, 1985-86
    (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 1988-09) Zemanovic, Marguerite E. ; Richardson, Philip L. ; Valdes, James R. ; Price, James F. ; Armi, Laurence
    In October, 1984, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution SOFAR float group began a three-year-long field program to observe the low frequency currents in the Canary Basin. The principal scientific goal was to learn how advection and diffusion by these currents determine the shape and amplitude of the Mediterranean salt tongue. Fourteen floats were launched at a depth of 1100 min a cluster centered on 32°N, 24°W, and seven other floats were launched incoherently along a north/south line from 24°N to 37°N. At the same time investigators from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Rhode Island used four other SOFAR floats to tag a Meddy, a submesoscale lens of Mediterranean water. In October, 1985, seven additional floats were launched, four in three different Meddies, one of which was tracked during year 1. This report describes the second year of the floats launched in 1984 and the first year of the ones launched in 1985. Approximately 41 years of float trajectories were produced during the first two years of the experiment. One of the striking accomplishments is the successful tracking of one Meddy over two full years plus the tracking of two other Meddies during the second year.
  • Technical Report
    Gulf Stream recirculation experiment - Part II
    (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 1989-09) Wooding, Christine M. ; Owens, W. Brechner ; Zemanovic, Marguerite E. ; Valdes, James R.
    This report presents trajectories and time series of velocity, pressure, and temperature for twelve neutrally-buoyant floats launched during the Gulf Stream Recirculation EXperiment (GUSREX) and two from earlier experiments, that continued to operate after May 1982. These float data were obtained from Autonomous Listening Stations (ALSs) deployed from May 1982 to August 1985.
  • Technical Report
    An FSK telemetry module for vector measuring current meters
    (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 1987-12) Fucile, Paul D. ; Valdes, James R.
    The EG&G Vector Measuring Current Meter (VMCM) used in mooring work provides a 20 ma Serial ASCII Instrumentation Loop (SAIL) communication system. A projected application of the VMCM is to have a surface mooring communicate with a series of VMCMs via a Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) link. While an FSK modem can communicate with the VMCM. a problem exists with the general operation of the VMCM. If the VMCM is addressed to dump data; it remains on until the unit is re-addressed. If a failure in the link occurs. then the VMCM stays on in . a higher power mode and the batteries will be depleted early. The insertion of a processing block between the modem the VMCM provides a way to look at incoming data. qualify it re-transmit it to the VMCM. The VMCM will reply and preprocessor can channel the data to the modem. In the event VMCM malfunction. the preprocessor has a timeout function will turn off the carrier keeping the line quiet.
  • Technical Report
    SOFAR float Mediterranean outflow experiment data from the first year, 1984-1985
    (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 1986-07) Price, James F. ; McKee, Theresa K. ; Valdes, James R. ; Richardson, Philip L. ; Armi, Laurence
    In October, 1984, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution SOFAR float group began a three-year long field program to observe the low frequency currents in the Canary Basin. The principal scientific goal was to learn how advection and diffusion by these currents determine the shape and amplitude of the Mediterranean salt tongue. Fourteen floats were launched at a depth of 1100 min a cluster centered on 32N, 24W, and seven other floats were launched incoherently along a north/south line from 24N to 37N. At the same time investigators from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Rhode Island used four other SOFAR floats to tag a submesoscale lens of Mediterranean water. Slightly over twenty years of float trajectories were p reduced during the first year of the experiment. In this report we briefly describe the 1984 field operations and show the first year's SOFAR float data. Perhaps the most striking result is that westward flow within the Mediterranean salt tongue was found to be confined to a rather narrow jet {roughly 150 km in meridional extent) which had a mean speed of roughly 2 em s -l. To the north or south of this jet the mean flow was much weaker and eastward. This suggests that currents associated with the salt tongue itself {rather than the gyre scale circulation) may be most important for determining the salt distribution.