Publication Date:
2022-09-23
Description:
Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2022. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of the Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 39(1), (2022): 31–35, https://doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-21-0075.1.
Description:
Acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCP) do not provide reliable water velocity measurements near the sea surface or bottom because acoustic sidelobe reflections from the boundary contaminate the Doppler velocity measurements. The apparent depth of the center of the sidelobe reflection is zsl = ha[1 − cos(θ)], where ha is the distance from the ADCP acoustic head to the sea surface and θ is the ADCP beam angle. However, sidelobe contamination extends one and a half ADCP bins below zsl as the range gating of the acoustic return causes overlap between adjacent ADCP bins. Consequently, the contaminated region z 〈 zsl + 3Δz/2 is deeper than traditionally suggested, with a dependence on bin size Δz. Direct observations confirming both the center depth of the sidelobe reflection and the depth of contamination are presented for six bottom-mounted, upward-looking ADCPs. The sidelobe reflection is isolated by considering periods of weak wind stresses when the sea surface is smooth and there is nearly perfect reflection of the main beams away from the ADCP and hence little acoustic return from the main beams to the ADCP.
Description:
This analysis was supported by NSF OCE 1558874 for Kirincich and Lentz. Plueddemann was supported by the Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (CPO Fund Reference Number 100007298), through the Cooperative Institute for the North Atlantic Region (CINAR) under Cooperative Agreement NA14OAR4320158.
Keywords:
Acoustic measurements/effects
;
Data processing/distribution
;
Profilers
;
oceanic
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
