Long-term monitoring of the NW Atlantic through altimetry and an
acoustic Doppler current profiler Monitoring long-term
variability in the vicinity of the Gulf Stream provides insight
into the larger-scale gyre circulation in the Atlantic including
northward heat and mass transport by the western boundary
current. The containership M/V Oleander has an acoustic Doppler
current profiler (ADCP) attached to its hull and has measured
upper-ocean current during its weekly route between New Jersey
and Bermuda since late 1992. The transit covers three distinct
regions of the northwest Atlantic including the Slope Sea, Gulf
Stream, and Sargasso Sea. The 16-year ADCP record provides an
excellent data set to create a mean geostrophic sea surface
height (SSH) field across this area for comparison with the mean
SSH product used with the altimeter SSH anomalies. The mean
fields show good agreement, but the derived SSH mean product
shows a wider Gulf Stream with a 132 cm difference in SSH across
a 320 km wide region, while