VEX: Exploratory Moored Measurements in the Vema Fracture Zone

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole MA

Investigators

Abstract

0083268 McCartney/WHOI A moored array will be deployed in the Vema Fracture Zone, a deep channel between the Guiana Basin and the eastern N. Atlantic through which bottom water from the Antarctic eneters the eastern N. Atlantic. The array of instruments will directly measure the transport and lateral structure of deep and bottom water flowing through the restricted channel and indirectly measure the degree of mixing and its variability. The instruments will stay in the water for roughly one year. The moored array will consist of four newly developed profiling moorings together with two more traditional curren meter moorings. Apart from the science questions that are the focus of the experiment, a by-product will be a comparison of new and traditional approaches to measuring abyssal circulation.