OC 3570

LT Terry McNamara

ADCP-Referenced Geostrophic Velocity and Transport of the Coast of Central California

Introduction
Historically, geostrophic flow across a vertical plane in the ocean has been calculated based on data collected from casts conducted at two hydrographic stations, one at either end of the plane (Pond and Pickard, 1983). Temperature and Depth). These days, this data is collected using a CTD (Conductivity, While useful, this method only This yields overall flow at various levels between the two stations; flow at intermediate points is not known. an assumed level of zero motion. The combination of an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) and precise navigational data from the Global Positioning System (GPS) enables absolute current velocity and transport to be measured. However, whereas CTDs can measure ocean parameters all the way to the bottom (as long as there is enough cable), ADCP is limited to about 650m depth, depending on the instrument and environmental conditions. deep water. This study aims to determine the absolute volume transport across Hydrographic Line 70, between Stations 6770 and 85-70, off the coast of central California (Figure This means that ADCP cannot measure a current profile for the entire water column in method also only yields velocity and transport relative to

1).

As Line 70 is roughly parallel to the coast, the

geostrophic transport here is either onshore or offshore.

Figure 1. Line 70 and the Central Coast of California. The red dots are the locations where R/V Point Sur conducted CTD casts for stations along Line 70. The vertical and horizontal scales are latitude and longitude, respectively. All data used in this study was gathered during a research cruise on R/V Point Sur 19-26 January 2006. Point Sur employed a Sea Bird 911+CTD/Rosette for all casts. ADCP. ADCP data was collected with an RDI 300kHz BB VMAbsolute current velocity was calculated using The

inputs from ADCP, the ships gyrocompass and GPS position and velocity.

Method
The analysis here is in large part derived from the method described by Osiski et al. (2003), who used ADCPderived absolute velocity measurements to establish a correction factor that could be applied to CTD-derived geostrophic velocity and transport. deeper than ADCP can measure. While most of the casts along Line 70 were limited to 1000m (much less, in most cases, then bottom depth), the casts at either end (at Stations 67-70 and 85-70) were all the way to the bottom. Onshore geostrophic transport for Line 70 was calculated from these two casts using the deepest point they had in common, 3532.5m, as a level of no motion. The results of this calculation are shown in It can be seen that total geostrophic transport Figure 2. In principle, this method enables us to calculate absolute transport in waters

is approximately 3.1 Sv offshore. All the data processing done in this study was performed using MATLAB code and datasets kindly provided by Dr. Curt Collins.

Figure 2. Onshore transport, integrated from bottom to surface (left) and onshore geostrophic velocity (right) for Line 70, relative to a level of no motion of 3532.5m. In order to compare the onshore component of ADCPderived velocity with CTD-derived velocity, it was required to select a level for the comparison. selection were: 1. 2. The level had to be within the ADCPs range (less than ~600m) The level had to be a depth where the change in velocity with depth (here referred to as du/dz) was The criteria for the

as close to zero as possible. measurement. 3.

This reduced the

chance of error due to small inaccuracies in depth The level had to be below the Ekman layer to eliminate Ekman currents as a source of error. Figure 3 shows an enlargement of the onshore geostrophic velocity plot at the level where the three selection criteria hold true. ADCP level 31 was the closest to the Therefore, that level, depth at which du/dz equaled zero.

at a depth of 259m, was used for determining the correction factor that would yield absolute onshore geostrophic flow all the way to the bottom.

Figure 3. Onshore geostrophic velocity at line 70. ADCP levels shown for comparison. Vertical axis is depth in meters; horizontal axis is onshore geostrophic velocity in cm/s.

Possible Sources of Error and Assumptions The main potential sources of error for this
analysis are of two types. The first comes from instrumentation, the second from ageostrophic velocities. The instrumentation errors mentioned by Osiki et al. (2003) are ADCP misalignment angle and Schuler Oscillation of the gyro. study. Both were known and accounted for during preprocessing of the data performed before it was used in this It is assumed that the error of the instruments themselves (CTD, ADCP, GPS) was small The effect of ageostrophic velocities is something of an unknown. As mentioned above, one of the reasons ADCP level 31 was selected is because it fairly certain this is well below the Ekman layer, removing Ekman currents as a source of error. It is thought that Line 70 is far enough The impact of other from land and in deep enough water that tidal currents were negligible (Osiski et al., 2003). ageostrophic velocities, such as drift currents, internal waves and internal oscillations is simply unknown and it had to be assumed that they were negligible.

Results
Before calculating ADCP-derived onshore velocity at level 31, the ADCP data had to be interpolated. This was necessary because the velocities at each station were biased according to the amount of time the ship spent at them. In addition, the locations at which the data was Figure 4 illustrated the raw ADCP velocity data collected were not in straight line, nor were they evenly spaced. for level 31.

Figure 4. Raw ADCP data for Line 70 at level 31 (z=259m). The red dots are the stations; the blue arrows current vectors. Note the uneven spacing and crookedness of the line of stations. The vertical and horizontal scales are latitude and longitude, respectively. Interpolation of the data yielded corrected ADCP velocities for Line 70. A 30 rotation of the axes, from the original u and v (North and East, respectively) to u and v, simplified calculations of onshore flow (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Interpolated ADCP data for Line 70 at level 31 (z=259m). The red dots are the stations; the blue arrows current vectors. Rotated axes, u and v, are shown. The vertical and horizontal scales are latitude and longitude, respectively. The mean onshore velocity at 259m for line 70 as measured by ADCP was calculated to be -0.0616cm/s. same depth, the geostrophic velocity by CTD was -1.0433cm/s. Therefore, a correction of +0.9817cm/s was applied to the CTD-derived onshore velocity profile to determine the absolute onshore geostrophic velocity and transport. The ADCP-corrected geostrophic transport and velocity are shown in Figure 6. At the

Figure 6. ADCP-corrected absolute geostrophic onshore transport, integrated from bottom to surface (left) and velocity profile (right) for Line 70. The resulting total transport is approximately 11.1 Sv onshore. The corrected velocity profile suggests that there is significant flow all the way to the bottom.

Conclusions
While the method of combining CTD and ADCP data to determine absolute transport all the way to the bottom shows considerable promise, it is clear that the method as used in this study needs improvement. It does not seem

possible that there could be an 11.1 Sv onshore flow at this location. An analysis conducted by LT Eric MacDonald (2006) on Line 67 (a line of stations perpendicular to Line 70 from the shore out to sea) indicates that better results can be obtained by calculating CTD-derived geostrophic velocity between each station and then correcting using ADCP. His method yields better spatial resolution. It is therefore likely that results of this study could be improved upon by performing deep casts at each station of Line 70 and determining transport between each cast.

Works Cited
MacDonald, Eric, presentation to NPS OC 3570 class of research on ADCP-referenced alongshore geostrophic velocity and transport off Monterey Bay, March 2006. Osiski, Robert, Piotr Wieczorek, Agnieszka BeszczyskaMller and Ilona Goszczko, ADCP-referenced geostrophic velocity and transport in the West Spitsbergen Current, Oceanologia, v.45, no.3, pp.425-435, 2003. Pond, Stephen and George L. Pickard, Introduction to Dynamical Oceanography, 2ed. Pergamon Press, Elmsford, NY, 1983.