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Experiment December 1996 - March 1998 |
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The
Strait of Hormuz, connecting the Arabian (Persian)
Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and Indian Ocean, is one of the most important
waterways in the world ocean. Water exchange through the Strait is believed
to be forced primarily by the large annual evaporation over the Arabian
Gulf, which drives a shallow inflow of water from the Arabian Sea and a
deep outflow of dense, hypersaline water. The inflow of Arabian Sea waters
occurs mainly to the northern part of the Strait (Fig.
1) and forms a low salinity wedge intruding westward into the
Gulf along the southern coast of Iran. Cyclonic circulation within the
Gulf carries these waters to the western and shallow southeastern areas
of the Gulf where they are transformed to dense, saline waters which sink
into the axial trough of the Persian Gulf and exit through the deepest
part of the Strait off northern Oman.
Two
subsurface moorings were deployed at 110 m depth within the central deep
channel through the southern Strait of Hormuz (Fig.
2).
An upward-looking 150 kHz Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) was deployed near the bottom and provided velocity profiles to within 10 m of the surface at nominal 5 m vertical resolution (Fig. 3). There were additional Aanderaa current meters (AACM) below the ADCP during both deployments, as well as an anchor-mounted SBE-16 with high-resolution Digiquartz pressure gauge during the first deployment.
An
adjacent taut-wire mooring provided temperature and salinity profiles from
20 - 100 m. Instrumentation on this mooring consisted of 5 Sea-Bird SBE-16
recorders, measuring temperature, salinity, and pressure at nominal depths
of 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100 m, and 5 TSKA temperature recorders deployed
at nominal depths of 30, 50, 70, and 90 m (Fig.
4). 
Publications:
Johns, W.E. and R.J. Zantopp, 1999: Data report for the Strait of Hormuz Experiment, December 1996 - March 1998. University of Miami / RSMAS Technical Report 99-001. Paper or CD-ROM version available from Rainer Zantopp.
For further information, please contact Bill Johns (305) 361-4054
