Abstract-A moored array of current, temperature, conductivity, and pressure sensors was deployed across the Chinese continental shelf and slope in support of the Asian Seas International Acoustics Experiment. The goal of the observations was to quantify the water column variability in order to understand the along-and across-shore low-frequency acoustic propagation in shallow water. The moorings were deployed from April 21-May 19, 2001 and sampled at 1-5 min intervals to capture the full range of temporal variability without aliasing the internal wave field. The dominant oceanographic signal by far was in fact the highly nonlinear internal waves (or solitons) which were generated near the Batan Islands in the Luzon Strait and propagated 485 km across deep water to the observation region. Dubbed trans-basin waves, to distinguish them from other, smaller nonlinear waves generated locally near the shelf break, these waves had amplitudes ranging from 29 to greater than 140 m and were among the largest such waves ever observed in the world's oceans. The waves arrived at the most offshore mooring in two clusters lasting 7-8 days each separated by five days when no waves were observed. Within each cluster, two types of waves arrived which have been named type-a and type-b. The type-a waves had greater amplitude than the type-b waves and arrived with remarkable regularity at the same time each day, 24 h apart. The type-b waves were weaker than the type-a waves, arrived an hour later each day, and generally consisted of a single soliton growing out of the center of the wave packet. Comparison with modeled barotropic tides from the generation region revealed that: 1) The two clusters were generated around the time of the spring tides in the Luzon strait; and 2) The type-a waves were generated on the strong side of the diurnal inequality while the type-b waves were generated on the weaker beat. The position of the Kuroshio intrusion into the Luzon Strait may modulate the strength of the waves being produced. As the waves shoaled, the huge lead solitons first split into two solitons then merged together into a broad region of thermocline depression at depths less than 120 m. Elevation waves sprang up behind them as they continued to propagate onshore. The elevation waves also grew out of regions where the locally-generated internal tide forced the main thermocline down near the bottom. The "critical T. Y. Tang is with the Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University, Taipei, ROC.H. point" where the upper and lower layers were equal was a good indicator of when the depression or elevation waves would form, however this was not a static point, but rather varied in both space and time according to the presence or absence of the internal tides and the incoming trans-basin waves themselves.

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[1] Dye release experiments were performed together with microstructure profiling to compare the two methods of estimating diapycnal diffusivity during summer and fall stratification on the continental shelf south of New England. The experiments were done in 1996 and 1997 as part of the Coastal Mixing and Optics Experiment. During the 100 hours or so of the experiments the area of the dye patches grew from less than 1 km 2 to more than 50 km 2 [Sundermeyer and Ledwell, 2001]. Diapycnal diffusivities inferred from dye dispersion range from 10 À6 to 10 À5 m 2 /s at buoyancy frequencies from 9 to 28 cycles/hour. Diffusivities estimated from the dye and those estimated from dissipation rates in the companion paper by Oakey and Greenan [2004] agree closely in most cases. Estimates of diffusivities from towed conductivity microstructure measurements made during the cruises by Duda and Rehmann [2002] and Rehmann and Duda [2000] are fairly consistent with the dye diffusivities. The dye diffusivities would be predicted well by an empirical formula involving shear and stratification statistics developed by MacKinnon and Gregg [2003] from profiling microstructure measurements obtained at the same site in August 1996. All of the measurements support the general conclusion that the diffusivity, averaged over several days, is seldom greater than 10 À5 m 2 /s in the stratified waters at the site, and usually not much greater than 10 À6 m 2 /s. Severe storms, such as a hurricane that passed over the CMO site in 1996, can dramatically increase the mixing at the site, however.

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A 1000-km acoustical transmission experiment has been carried out in the North Pacific, with pulses broadcast between a moored broadband source (250-Hz center frequency) and a moored sparse vertical line of receivers. Two data records are reported: a period of 9 days at a pulse rate of one per hour, and a 21-h period on the seventh day at six per hour. Many wave-front segments were observed at each hydrophone depth, and arrival times were tracked and studied as functions of time and depth. Arrivals within the final section of the pulse are not trackable in time or space at the chosen sampling rates, however. Broadband fluctuations, which are uncorrelated over 10-min sampling and 60-m vertical spacing, are observed with about 40 (ms)2 variance. The variance of all other fluctuations (denoted as low-frequency) is comparable or smaller than the broadband value; this low-frequency variance can be separated into two parts: a wave-front segment displacement (with vertical correlation length greater than 1 km) that varies substantially between rays with different ray identifiers, and a distortion (with vertical correlation length between 60 m and 1 km) of about 2 (ms)2 variance. The low-frequency variance may be explained as the effect of internal waves, including internal tides. The variance of the broadband fluctuations is reduced somewhat but not eliminated if only high-intensity peaks are selected; this selection does not affect the statistics of the low-frequency fluctuations.

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