BEMPLEX: A study of barotropic ocean currents and lithospheric electrical conductivity using seafloor pressure and electromagnetic instruments.
01 January 1987
The motivation and objectives of a major experiment to study certain properties of barotropic (depth-independent) fluctuations of the ocean and to investigate the electrical conductivity structure of the underlying oceanic lithosphere are described. Referred to by the acronym BEMPLEX for Barotropic ElectroMagnetic and Pressure EXperiment, the effort utilizes a large (1100 km by 1000 km) horizontal array of seafloor pressure and electromagnetic instrumentation to achieve the dual goals. The experiment is sited in the mid-latitude North Pacific in an area devoid of intense mean currents and mesocale eddies where the weak, background barotropic field is believed to be directly, atmospherically forced. The emphasis in BEMPEX is on obtaining high quality estimates of the frequency-wavenumber characteristics of a variety of ocean flows and on collecting detailed information on the electrical structure of the earth using new techniques.