A note on the use of acoustic Doppler current profilers in mesoscale surveys

The mesoscale structure of the Arctic Front in the Greenland Sea has been investigated during three surveys using acoustic Doppler current profiling and hydrographic measurements. It is shown that systematic errors of the current measurements that are related to the ship´s speed can be reduced significantly by an appropriate calibration, and that the vessel´s navigation remains the main limiting factor in obtaining accurate estimates of absolute currents. However, in regions where the temperature distribution can be assumed to correspond to the density distribution, vertical shear measurements compare favorably with the horizontal temperature fields so that they prove to be a useful tool for high-resolution mesoscale investigations