Sponsors

Principal funding is provided by National Science Foundation.

Principal funding is provided by Office Of Naval Research.

Upper Ocean Mooring Data Repository - CoOP: Coastal Ocean Processes Program

Overview:

To improve our understanding of nearshore processes and the physical and biological processes influencing planktonic larval distributions over the inner shelf, an interdisciplinary field program, funded by the National Science Foundation's Coastal Ocean Processes (CoOP) Program and the Office of Naval Research, was conducted near Duck, North Carolina.

One component of the field program was a moored array of physical oceanographic and meteorological instruments. An objective of this component was to understand the influence of surface gravity waves and wind stress on the inner-shelf dynamics, where the inner shelf is the region between the surfzone and roughly the 20-m isobath.

Location:

Centered at approximately 36° 12´N,   73° 40´W, on the North Carolina shelf between Chesapeake Bay and Oregon Inlet

Duration:

4 months, from August to December, 1994.

Mooring Specifications:

The focal point of the physical oceanographic component of the CoOp Inner-Shelf Study was a cross-shelf three-element array of surface/subsurface mooring pairs and an along-shelf array of sensors mounted on jetted pipes along the shore and deeper sensors mounted on surface moorings.

Mooring details are presented in a table.

Instrumentation:

Meteorological data was collected at the central buoy in the alongshelf array. The variables observed and other details are listed in a table of meteorological instrumentation.

Temperature, conductivity, velocity and bottom pressure sensors were deployed at various sites. The locations and variables observed are listed in a table of oceanographic instrumentation.

Data:

More detailed information and access to data files is organized by data type:

Meteorology
Water Velocity
Temperature
Salinity
Bottom Pressure

References:

• Alessi, C., Lentz, S., Austin, J., 1996: Coastal Ocean Processes Inner-Shelf Study: Coastal and Moored Physical Oceanographic Measurements, Woods Hole Oceanographic Inst. Tech. Rep. WHOI-96-06, Woods Hole, MA, 154 pp. abstract pdf
• Lentz, S., R. T. Guza, S. Elgar, F. Feddersen, and T.H.C. Herbers, Momentum balances on the North Carolina Inner Shelf, J. Geophy. Res, 104, 18205-18226, 1999. (Abstract available)