This project is part of an integrated research program into the oceanographic structure of the western Weddell Sea. It is to be carried out from an ice camp jointly occupied by U.S. and USSR scientists from February to June 1992. The work proposed here is an effort to measure vertical profiles of velocity and temperature using an acoustic doppler current profiler (ADCP) and a string of twelve internally recording temperature sensors, as well as a Rapid Sampling Vertical Profiler, a tethered sensor system that free falls through the upper 250 meters of the ocean. The upper ocean is a relatively active zone where turbulent motion is produced both by shear flow and by the movement of sea ice through the water. The objective is to study how turbulent energy is created and destroyed by the exchange of momentum and energy across density surfaces in the upper mixed layer, by shear induced mixing, and by the differential diffusion of heat and salt. The frequent and quasi-continuous current profiles produced by the ADCP will be used to define the internal gravity wave field, and how gravity waves are affected by the bottom topography. When supplemented by information on the regional temperature structure of the upper ocean, the observations will allow a separation of the barotropic and baroclinic component of the surface currents.
