CODE-2 : moored array and large-scale data report

This work hasbeen supported by the National ScienceFoundation.

The Coastal Ocean Dynamics Experiment(CODE) was undertaken to identify and studythe important dynamical processes whichgovern the wind-driven motion of coastalwater over the continental shelf. Theinitial effort in this multi-year, multi-institutionalresearch program was to obtainhigh-quality data sets of all therelevant physical variables needed to constructaccurate kinematic and dynamic descriptionsof the response of shelf waterto strong wind forcing in the 2 to 10 dayband. A series of two small-scale, densely-instrumented field experiments of approximatelyfour months duration (called CODE-1and CODE-2) were designed to explore andto determine the kinematics and momentumand heat balances of the local wind-drivenflow over a region of the northern Californiashelf which is characterized by bothrelatively simple bottom topography andlarge wind stress events in both winterand summer. A more lightly instrumented,long -term, large-scale component wasdesigned to help separate the local wind-drivenresponse in the region of the small-scaleexperiments from motions generatedeither offshore by the California Currentsystem or in some distant region along thecoast, and also to help determine the seasonalcycles of the atmospheric forcing,water structure, and coastal currents overthe northern California shelf.The first small-scale experiment(CODE-1) was conducted between April andAugust, 1981 as a pilot study in "whichprimary emphasis was placed on characterizingthe wind-driven "signal" and the"noise" from which this signal must beextracted. In particular, CODE-1 wasdesigned to identify the key features ofthe circulation and its variability overthe northern California shelf and todetermine the important time and lengthscales of the wind-driven response. Thesecond small-scale experiment (CODE-2) wasconducted between April and August, 1982and was designed to sample more carefullythe mesoscale horizonta1 variabilityobserved in CODE-1. This report presents abasic description of the moored array dataand some other Eulerian data collectedduring CODE-2. A brief description of theCODE-2 field program is presented first,followed by a description of the commondata analysis procedures used to producethe various data sets presented here. Thenbasic descriptions of the following datasets are presented: (a) the coastal andmoored meteorological measurements, (b)the moored current measurements, (c) arrayplots of the surface wind stress and near-surfacecurrent measurements, (d) themoored temperature and conductivity observations,(e) the bottom pressure measurements,and (f) the wind and adjustedcoastal sea level observations obtained aspart of the CODE-2 large-scale component.