Turbulence demonstrates height variations in closely spaced deep-sea mooring lines

TL;DR

This study introduces a high-resolution temperature sensor method to detect small height variations in deep-sea mooring lines, demonstrating its effectiveness during periods of strong stratification and turbulence.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel approach using temperature sensors and turbulence filtering to determine relative heights of mooring lines without high-accuracy pressure sensors.

Findings

Height variations of about 0.2 meters were detectable.

Sensor noise and electronic drift limited accuracy during homogeneous conditions.

Method was effective during periods of strong stratification and turbulence.

Abstract

It may be important to precisely know heights of moored oceanographic instrumentation. For example, moorings can be closely spaced or accidentally be located on small rocks or in small gullies. Height variations O(1 m) will yield registration of different values when conditions such as small-scale density stratification vary strongly. Such little height variations may prove difficult to measure in the deep sea, requiring high-accuracy pressure sensors preferably on all instruments in a mooring-array. In this paper, an alternative method for relative height determination is presented using high-resolution temperature sensors moored on multiple densely-spaced lines in the deep Western Mediterranean. While it was anticipated that height variations between lines could be detected under near-homogeneous conditions via adiabatic lapse rate O(0.0001degrC m-1) by the 0.00003degrC-noise-level sensors, such was prevented by the impossibility of properly correcting for short-term bias due to electronic drift. Instead, a satisfactory height determination was found during a period of relatively strong stratification and large turbulence activity. By band-pass filtering data of the highest-resolved turbulent motions across the strongest temperature gradient, significant height variations were detectable to within +/-0.2 m.