Abstract:
The Santa Barbara Channel study (SBC) is a closely articulated program involving both observational and computational techniques to obtain the best estimate of the physical oceanographic conditions in the Santa Barbara Channel. A comprehensive observational data set was acquired and a numerical simulation driven by the observational data was performed. The results yield detailed information on ... the Channel circulation and hydrography.
The funding agency was MMS (Department of Interior, Minerals Management Service); the contractors, Dyanlysis of Princeton and Science Applications International Corporation.
Regional Coverage
The CTD surveys were made within the Santa Barbara Channel and the Santa Maria Basin, primarily along cross-shelf transects. These transects were marked on either end by mooring locations. The moorings have four-letter names, in which the first two letters represent a nearby geographical landmark (eg. "GO" for the town of Goleta), and the last two letters indicate whether the mooring is inshore ("IN"), offshore ("OFF"), or in the middle ("MI"). The CTD transect names are taken from the first two letters of the appropriate moorings. See the table below for a list of CTD transects and the associated moorings.
Not all of the CTD casts were taken along these transects, particularly in the early days of the project. In addition, not all of the transects were occupied all of the time. The AN and SM transects were occupied most often. The transects in the Santa Maria Basin (AB, SA, and AR) were not occupied at all until later in the Study.
Data collection There are typically seven or eight casts per transect, with a spacing of about 3 to 5 km per cast. The casts go down to a maximum of about 500 m in the deepest part of the channel. Usually all of the transects in one particular cruise are traversed as close in time as possible, to preserve the synoptic nature of the dataset.
CTD Cast Data
CTD cast data available from this FTP site are organized by cruise and stored in CSA format. The cruise code is a four-digit number where the first two digits are year, and the last two digits are month. CSA format is an ASCII format in which the first five lines of the file contain the header information. Lines 1 through 3 contain the static variable names, units, and values; lines 4 and 5 contain the dynamic variable names and units. The rest of the file contains the dynamic variables in columns. The filenames use the following convention: the first four digits represent the cruise; the next letter distinguishes between the Neil Brown ("n") or the Ocean Sensors ("o") CTD instrument; and the last three digits represent the station number. For example, CTD cast #1 from Cruise 7 (cruise code 9408), taken with the Ocean Sensors CTD, would be called 9408o001.csa.
Towed CTD Data
The towed CTD data are also organized by cruise, and are in the "tow" subdirectories. These files are in CSA format, as described above, but the columns and variables contained in the files are different from the casts. The file naming conventions are also a bit different. The first four digits of the filename are again the cruise code, but the next set of letters represent the transect as discussed in the CTD introduction page. So a transect taken during cruise 9408 along the CA transect would be called 9408ca.csa. However, if the ship was steaming from one transect to another while the towed CTD data was being collected, that data filename will have four letters: two for the first transect, and two for the second. For example, a transect between the CA and AN lines would be called 9408caan.csa. Also, if data were taken on a particular transect more than once, it will have a sequence number (eg. 9408pa1.csa and 9408pa2.csa). As mentioned on the towed CTD info page, towed data are only available for cruises 9408, 9501, 9508, 9601, and 9603.
The Data Zoo
The Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, has developed an on-line database of physical oceanographic data organized by experiment, and referred to as the 'Data Zoo.' The animals in this 'zoo' are the individual data sets, one of which is described above. The zoo is funded by the Mineral Management Service, Bureau of Land Management, Department of the Interior.
Links
