Prior to the Autosal 8400A, measurements made by Ted Walsh using the Minisal were also processed by him. However, new processing parameters and methods were developed when the group purchased and started using the Autosal 8400A for HOT-27. Currently, data from the Autosal measurement sessions are captured directly from the Autosal 8400B to the laptop hard drive using the automated data entry interface and the asal program that came with the interface. The asal program creates raw data files (raw, *.lst, *.dat) which are necessary for data processing. This method has been employed since May 2, 2000 (HOT-114), when the group started using the Autosal interface. In addition, many original processing programs were modified to work with the asal program and its output files. Besides processing programs, the most important difference between data processing before and after the interface is the method of data entry. Before the interface, data acquisition and entry were all done manually: the Autosal operator recorded the conductivity ratios onto the Salinity Measurement Sheets, and student assistants computed the averages and entered them into the computer. This method allowed for errors in data entry, caused by operator errors and confusion. Detailed procedures are described in the Salinity Data Processing Guide (Pre-asal Procedures) (Asghar et al. 1994, Appendix M).
Table 5 is a summary of changes in processing programs that occurred after the purchase of the Autosal interface:
|
|
Before
Interface (Before HOT-114)
|
After
Interface (HOT-114 to present)
|
|
Data acquisition
|
Manual entry on measurement log sheets, average salinity computed manually |
Interface and the asal program used. |
|
Data entry
into a Sun computer hard drive
|
Manual entry into the computer, using autosal.c which outputs hot###a.log, hot###a.raw per session |
Data files (raw, *.lst, *.dat) transferred through FTP, asal2dat.m reads the output of the asal program to create hot###.dat, ss###.dat, ss###.stat |
|
Substandard
statistics
|
ssstat.m
|
pssstat.m (to work with files created by asal2dat.m) |
|
Application
of corrections
|
raw2dat.c creates hot###.dat |
hot###.dat already created by asal2dat.m during data entry |
|
Autosal
vs. CTD plots
|
plotdat.m outputs hot###.ps |
autoplot.m (same as plotdat.m but this automatically creates plots sequentially w/out prompts) |
|
Duplicates
data
|
none |
duplicates.m plots primary and secondary samples to determine outliers. duplicates2.m plots duplicate-primary salinity differences with CTD data. |
|
Data transfer
to CTD processing
|
dat2sal.c
|
dat2sal.m (same as dat2sal.c, just in Matlab) |
|
Summary
report
|
Word processing on Open Windows, tables created by *.trf and *.tbl (troff files) |
Word processing on FrameMaker5, tables created by enscription. |