ADCP data were processed using RDI Instruments software. The binary data
from the instruments were converted to ASCII using the program "bblist".
Then, the data were screened using the criteria suggested in the RDI manuals.
If the percentage good for any bin was less the 25% in both 3 and 4 beam
solutions the data were marked as bad. Also if the correlation magnitude
fell below 64 for any of the 4 beams the data were marked as bad.
Additionally for upward looking ADCP's you have to be careful about the near
surface bins. Looking at the Echo intensity you will see a drop-off and
then large return in the near surface bins. The bin just before the minimum
in echo intensity near the surface is usually considered the last good bin
(for 4 m bins in 80m of water this bin is about 10-15m below the surface).
Null or bad values of ADCP data are listed as -99.00. If the
whole profile consists of bad values, the instrument is
either absent or failing to send valid data. The data is flagged
as being bad if any beam has a correlation value below 64 or
if the percentages good for 3 and 4 beam solutions are less
than 25 percent. The complete data set can be found in a
netCDF file included in the 'Original' directory. The netCDF
files can be converted to ASCII using the Matlab function
'writeadcp3.m' included in the mfiles directory. The ASCII
output stores the U and V velocities in separate files.
Each row of the ASCII files contain the time and the current
velocity of one component of a single profile. The depths
of the center of each velocity bin are listed in the header
of the data file.