An array of current meters was deployed along the continental shelf and upper slope from April 15 to July 1, 1982, as part oc the Warm Core Rings Experiment. The array consisted of four mooring sites along the 325-m isobath making an ''X'' with another line of moorings extending from the 60-m to the 900-m isobath. The purpose of the array was to examine the current and temperature variability induced at the shelf break and upper slope by the formation and passing of ring 82B. The velocity records consisted of 2- to 10-day fluctuations embedded on a long-period signal with a period ranging from 15 to 26 days, increasing offshore. The temperature records contained three time scales: The 2- to 10-day scale, longer (about 1-2 months) scales due to movements of the shelf-slope front induced by the ring, and an increasing trend due to seasonal warming. The 2-day to 10-day fluctuations of velocity and temperature were not statistically coherent with each other or with the weak surface wind stress but appear to be visually correlated with small (sub-ring) scale undulations along the shelf-slope front as seen in the advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR) sea surface temperature imagery on an event by event basis.

The observed periods and across-shore scales of the long-period motions were used with barotropic topographic Rossby wave (TRW) theory to estimate alongshore wavelengths of the order of 1000 km for these motions, westward and slightly offshore phase velocities, and onshore group velocity. Friction and wave fraction will not allow barotropic TRWs of the observed period to penetrate the upper slope unless the source is located nearby on the continental rise, which strongly suggests Gulf Stream warm core ring 82B as the energy source for the waves. The observed wave energy was used with the radiation model of Louis and Smith (1982) to estimate the rate at which energy was being lost from the source of the waves. The decay rate calculated from the moorings and the model was 0.24¿1013 J d-1, averaged over 6--14 weeks after ring formation, compared with 0.81¿10-13 Jd-1 for the decay rate of ring 82B (Olson et al., 1985) based on observed changes in the ring's available potential energy during April-June 1982.