ALBERT

Description: A 12-month mooring record (May 1994–June 1995), together with accompanying PALACE float data, is used to describe an annual cycle of deep convection and restratification in the Labrador Sea. The mooring is located at 56.75°N, 52.5°W, near the former site of Ocean Weather Station Bravo, in water of 3500 m depth. This is a pilot experiment for climate monitoring, and also for studies of deep-convection dynamics. Mooring measurements include temperature (T), salinity (S), horizontal and vertical velocity, and acoustic measurement of surface winds. The floats made weekly temperature–salinity profiles between their drift level (near 1500 m) and the surface. With moderately strong cooling to the atmosphere (300 W m−2 averaged from November to March), wintertime convection penetrated from the surface to about 1750 m, overcoming the stabilizing effect of upper-ocean low-salinity water. The water column restratifies rapidly after brief vertical homogenization (in potential density, salinity, and potential temperature). Both the rapid restratification and the energetic high-frequency variations of T and S observed at the mooring are suggestive of a convection depth that varies greatly with location. Lateral variations in T and S exist down to very small scales, and these remnants of convection decay (with e-folding time 170 day) after convection ceases. Lateral variability at the scale of 100 km is verified by PALACE profiles. The Eulerian mooring effectively samples the convection in a mesoscale region of ocean as eddies sweep past it; the Lagrangian PALACE floats are complementary in sampling the geography of deep convection more widely. This laterally variable convection leaves the water column with significant vertical gradients most of the year. Convection followed by lateral mixing gives vertical salinity profiles the (misleading) appearance that a one-dimensional diffusive process is fluxing freshwater downward. During spring, summer, and fall the salinity, temperature, and buoyancy rise steadily with time throughout most of the water column. This is likely the result of mixing with the encircling boundary currents, compensating for the escape of Labrador Sea Water from the region. Low-salinity water mixes into the gyre only near the surface. The water-column heat balance is in satisfactory agreement with meteorological assimilation models. Directly observed subsurface calorimetry may be the more reliable indication of the annual-mean air–sea heat flux. Acoustic instrumentation on the mooring gave a surprisingly good time series of the vector surface wind. The three-dimensional velocity field consists of convective plumes of width 200 to 1000 m, vertical velocities of 2 to 8 cm s−1, and Rossby numbers of order unity, embedded in stronger (20 cm s−1) lateral currents associated with mesoscale eddies. Horizontal currents with timescales of several days to several months are strongly barotropic. They are suddenly energized as convection reaches great depth in early March, and develop toward a barotropic state, as also seen in models of convectively driven geostrophic turbulence in a weakly stratified, high-latitude ocean. Currents decay through the summer and autumn, apart from some persistent isolated eddies. These coherent, isolated, cold anticyclones carry cores of pure convected water long after the end of winter. Boundary currents nearby interact with the Labrador Sea gyre and provide an additional source of eddies in the interior Labrador Sea. An earlier study of the pulsation of the boundary currents is supported by observations of sudden ejection of floats from the central gyre into the boundary currents (and sudden ingestion of boundary current floats into the gyre interior), in what may be a mechanism for exchange between Labrador Sea Water and the World Ocean.

Description: In the autumn of 1996 the field component of an experiment designed to observe water mass transformation began in the Labrador Sea. Intense observations of ocean convection were taken in the following two winters. The purpose of the experiment was, by a combination of meteorological and oceanographic field observations, laboratory studies, theory, and modeling, to improve understanding of the convective process in the ocean and its representation in models. The dataset that has been gathered far exceeds previous efforts to observe the convective process anywhere in the ocean, both in its scope and range of techniques deployed. Combined with a comprehensive set of meteorological and air-sea flux measurements, it is giving unprecedented insights into the dynamics and thermodynamics of a closely coupled, semienclosed system known to have direct influence on the processes that control global climate.

Description: Parameterization of turbulent wind stress and sensible and latent heat fluxes is reviewed in the context of climate studies and model calculations, and specific formulas based on local measurements are recommended. Wind speed is of key importance, and in applying experimental results, the differences between local and modeled winds must be considered in terms of their method of observation or calculation. Climatological wind data based on Beaufort wind force reports require correction for historical trends. Integrated long-term net turbulent and radiative heat fluxes at the sea surface, calculated from archived data, are consistent with meridional heat transport through oceanographic sections; this lends support to the methods used

Description: Accurate measurement of fluctuations in temperature and humidity are needed for determination of the surface evaporation rate and the air-sea sensible heat flux using either the eddy correlation or inertial dissipation method for flux calculations. These measurements are difficult to make over the ocean, and are subject to large errors when sensors are exposed to marine air containing spray droplets. All currently available commercial measurement devices for atmospheric humidity require frequent maintenance. Included in the objectives of the Humidity Exchange over the Sea program were testing and comparison of sensors used for measuring both the fluctuating and mean humidity in the marine atmosphere at high wind speeds and development of techniques for the protection of these sensors against contamination by oceanic aerosols. These sensors and droplet removal techniques are described and comparisons between measurements from several different systems are discussed in this paper. To accomplish these goals, participating groups devised and tested three methods of removing sea spray from the sample airstream. The best performance was given by a rotating semen device, the “spray Ringer.” Several high-frequency temperature and humidity instruments, based on different physical principles, were used in the collaborative field experiment. Temperature and humidity fluctuations were measured with sufficient accuracy inside the spray removal devices using Lyman-α hygrometers and a fast thermocouple psychrometer. Comparison of several types of psychrometers (using electric thermometers) and a Rotronic MP-100 humidity sensor for measuring the mean humidity illustrated the hysteresis of the Rotronic MP-100 device after periods of high relative humidity. Confidence in the readings of the electronic psychrometer was established by in situ calibration with repeated and careful readings of ordinary hand-held Assman psychrometers (based on mercury thermometers). Electronic psychrometer employing platinum resistance thermometers perform very well.

Description: On 24 and 25 October 1995, high-resolution oceanographic measurements were carried out in the Strait of Messina by using a towed conductivity-temperature-depth chain and a vessel-mounted acoustic Doppler current profiler. During the period of investigation the surface water of the Tyrrhenian Sea north of the strait sill was heavier than the surface water of the Ionian Sea south of the strait sill. As a consequence, during northward tidal flow surface water of the Ionian Sea spread as a surface jet into the Tyrrhenian Sea, whereas during southward tidal flow heavier surface water of the Tyrrhenian Sea spread, after having sunk to a depth of about 100 m, as a subsurface jet into the Ionian Sea. Both jets had the form of an internal bore, which finally developed into trains of internal solitary waves whose amplitudes were larger north than south of the strait sill. These measurements represent a detailed picture of the tidally induced internal dynamics in the Strait of Messina during the period of investigation, which contributes to elucidate several aspects of the general internal dynamics in the area: 1) Associated with the tidal flow are intense water jets whose equilibrium depth strongly depends on the horizontal density distribution along the Strait of Messina; 2) although climatological data show that a large horizontal density gradient in the near-surface layer along the Strait of Messina exists, its reversal can occur; 3) fluctuations in the larger-scale circulation patterns that determine the inflow of the modified Atlantic water into the Eastern Mediterranean Sea can be responsible for this reversal. As the tidally induced internal waves reflect the variability in the horizontal density distribution along the Strait of Messina, it is suggested that from the analysis of synthetic aperture radar imagery showing sea surface manifestations of internal waves in this area fluctuations of larger-scale circulation patterns in the Mediterranean Sea can be inferred.

Description: Ocean currents’ effect on long-range sound propagation, though considerable in many cases, is difficult to separate from much stronger effects due to sound speed inhomogeneities, as flow velocity is usually much smaller than typical variations in the sound speed. Dramatic improvement can be achieved in reciprocal transmission experiments when sound signals propagate in opposite directions between two transceivers (source–receiver pairs). The presence of a current results in the breaking of the principle of acoustic reciprocity, thus making it possible to use nonreciprocity of acoustic field as an indicator of water movement. In this paper, reciprocal acoustic transmissions through a submesoscale interthermocline lens of Mediterranean Water (meddy) in the Atlantic are considered theoretically as a possible tool for meddies detection. A simple model of acoustic ray-travel-time nonreciprocity due to a meddy is proposed. The analytic estimates obtained from the model show that the influence of rotary flow is more important than that of drift and seems to be measurable. The problem is studied in more detail via computer simulations. The environmental model used in the simulations corresponds to case studies performed in the Iberian Basin in 1989 and 1991. Numerical simulations show that travel times between two transceivers can be gathered into several groups; for the most part, rays in each set have similar geometry for both propagation directions. However, the lens strongly affects the number of rays in each group, their launch angles, and number of surface interactions, making it impossible to identify these arrivals as required for conventional ocean acoustic tomography. In spite of complexity of ray structure, travel-time nonreciprocity predicted by the model proposed is in good agreement with numerical results. This fact suggests that the model could be used to estimate some parameters of a meddy.