SADCP measurements of the Malvinas Current at 43-47°S in March 2020
Description
Field measurements of the Malvinas Current velocity distribution were performed at a few locations of the western slope of the Argentine Basin in the South Atlantic Ocean between 47° and 43°S including several sections across the current. The underway Shipborne Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (SADCP) data were collected from the R/V “Akademik Mstislav Keldysh” in March 2020 using a Teledyne RD Instruments Ocean Surveyor profiler with a frequency of 76.8 kHz. During these measurements, the profiler was set in narrowband mode, which increases the profiling range up to 700 m depth. We set the system to collect velocity observations at 100 vertical bins 8-m each with an 8-m blank distance immediately below the transducer. The depth of the uppermost layer with valid velocity measurements is centered at 18 m due to the blank distance and 6-m draught of the ship. Time averaging of the raw data was made over 120 s intervals, which corresponds to along-track averaging of roughly 500 m along the ship's track.