Stearns, L.; Muglia, M.; Seim, H.E.; Bane, J.; Blanton, B.; Surface Currents off the Outer Banks of North Carolina, ROW 4, Magnetic Island, Queensland, Australia

Abstract

Beginning in early summer 2003 two HF Radar units were deployed on the Outer Banks of North Carolina: at the Army Corps of Engineers Field Research Facility in Duck; and at the Cape Hatteras Coast Guard Facility in Buxton. Both were Long Range SeaSonde units, manufactured by Codar Ocean Sensors. This component of the regional observing system SEACOOS relies on ocean waves to scatter HF radio waves, then uses Doppler shift and theoretical wave speed to compute surface currents. Combining output from two sites results in a map of surface currents that are an average over a 6 by 6 km square of ocean up to 120 km from the shore. These measurements are a temporal average, outputting a three hour average every hour in near real time.

The presentation focuses on the effects of using measured vs. ideal antenna patterns, the physical configuration of the sites, mean currents, and all available data comparissons. Tidal harmonic analyses for all points of consistent coverage in the region are compared to tidal model results. Also, since the region of data coverage often includes part of the Gulf Stream, characteristics of its flow are compared with thermal satelite imagery.

Citation

Stearns, L.; Muglia, M.; Seim, H.E.; Bane, J.; Blanton, B.; Surface Currents off the Outer Banks of North Carolina, ROW 4, Magnetic Island, Queensland, Australia

The complete powerpoint presentation is available.

For more information, see the SEACOOS Observing Working Group and this SEACOOS news article.