OS Ocean Science OS Ocean Sci. 1812-0792 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/os-1-17-2005 High sampling rate thermistor string observations at the slope of Great Meteor Seamount van Haren H. 1 Groenewegen R. 1 Laan M. 1 Koster B. 1 Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), P.O. Box 59, 1790 AB Den Burg, The Netherlands 10 05 2005 1 1 17 28 Copyright: © 2005 H. van Haren et al. 2005 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ This article is available from https://os.copernicus.org/articles/1/17/2005/os-1-17-2005.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://os.copernicus.org/articles/1/17/2005/os-1-17-2005.pdf

A high sampling rate (1 Hz) thermistor string has been built to accommodate the scientific need to accurately monitor high-frequency and vigorous internal wave and overturning processes in the ocean. The thermistors and their custom designed electronics can register temperature at an estimated precision of about 0.001° C with a response time faster than 0.25 s down to depths of 6000 m. With a quick in situ calibration using SBE 911 CTD an absolute accuracy of 0.005° C is obtained. The present string holds 128 sensors at 0.5 m intervals, which are all read-out within 0.5 s. When sampling at 1 Hz, the batteries and the memory capacity of the recorder allow for deployments of up to 2 weeks. In this paper, the instrument is described in some detail. Its performance is illustrated with examples from the first moored observations, which show Kelvin-Helmholtz overturning and very high-frequency (Doppler-shifted) internal waves besides occasionally large turbulent bores moving up the sloping side of Great Meteor Seamount, Canary Basin, North-Atlantic Ocean.