The Coastal Ocean Dynamics Experiment collection: An introduction

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Abstract
The Coastal Ocean Dynamics Experiment (CODE) was designed to identify and study those dynamical processes which govern the wind‐driven motion of water over the continental shelf. The initial effort in this multiyear, multi‐institutional research program was to obtain high‐quality data sets of all the relevant physical variables needed to construct accurate kinematic and dynamic descriptions of the response of continental shelf waters to strong wind forcing in the synoptic band covering 2‐ to 20‐day variability. Two small‐scale, densely instrumented field experiments, each approximately 4 months long, were conducted in spring and summer 1981 (CODE 1) and 1982 (CODE 2). A more sparsely instrumented, long‐term, large‐scale component was also conducted in conjunction with a separate but related Large‐Scale West Coast Shelf Experiment (informally called “SuperCODE”) to help separate the local wind‐driven response in the region of the small‐scale experiments from motions generated in some distant region along the coast and to investigate the seasonal cycles of atmospheric forcing, water structure, and coastal currents between 35° and 48°N.