5 sites covering Haro Strait in British Columbia, Rockall Trough and Faroe Bank Channel in the north Atlantic Ocean, Baltic Sea and Minas Passage in Bay of Fundy

Turbulence in the water column

Microstructure sensors

These datasets consist of time series of shear probe data and data from other available sensors, used for estimates of the viscous rate of dissipation of turbulence kinetic energy. The datasets were put together as a part of the Scientific Committee on Oceanographic Research (SCOR) working group #160 "Analyzing ocean turbulence observations to quantify mixing" (ATOMIX), the shear probe subgroup prepared benchmark datasets. The datasets were collected from five sites: Baltic Sea (Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research, Warnemünde, 20 September 2008), Faroe Bank Channel (University of Bergen, 10 June 2012), Minas Passage (Rockland Scientific International, 10 September 2016), Haro Straight (Rockland Scientific International, 19 October 2016) and Rockall Trough (Scripps Institution of Oceanography, July 2021). The datasets are presented in a documented and homogeneous format that encompasses four levels defined by the ATOMIX Working Group. The netCDF files include four hierarchical groups, corresponding to the four levels of microstructure data in the ATOMIX format: L1_converted: time series from all sensors converted into physical units; L2_cleaned: selected signals that are filtered and/or despiked before spectral analysis; L3_spectra: wavenumber spectra from shear probes and vibration sensors; L4_dissipation: dissipation estimates together with quality control parameters. These datasets provide a resource for users to evaluate their routines and allow for platform-independent analysis of shear probe data once the Level 1 data is provided. Users can then analyse data from their desired level, such as starting with Level 1, selecting sections of cleaned time series from Level 2, or utilising corrected shear spectra from Level 3. Further information can be found https://wiki.app.uib.no/atomix/index.php?title=Shear_probes.

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