ALBERT

Description: The Ocean Reference Station at 20°S, 85°W under the stratus clouds west of northern Chile and Peru is being maintained to provide ongoing, climate-quality records of surface meteorology, of air-sea fluxes of heat, freshwater, and momentum, and of upper ocean temperature, salinity, and velocity variability. The Stratus Ocean Reference Station, hereafter ORS Stratus, is supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations (NOAA) Climate Observation Program. It is recovered and redeployed annually, with cruises that have come in October or November. During the November 2003 cruise of Scripps Institution of Oceanography's R/V Roger Revelle to the ORS Stratus site, the primary activities where the recovery of the WHOI surface mooring that had been deployed in October 2002, the deployment of a new WHOI surface mooring at that site, the in-situ calibration of the buoy meteorological sensors by comparison with instrumentation put on board by Chris Fairall of the NOAA Environmental Technology Laboratory (ETL), and observations of the stratus clouds and lower atmosphere by NOAA ETL and Jason Tomlinson from Texas A&M. The ORS Stratus buoys are equipped with two Improved Meteorological systems, which provide surface wind speed and direction, air temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure, incoming shortwave radiation, incoming longwave radiation, precipitation rate, and sea surface temperature. The IMET data are made available in near real time using satellite telemetry. The mooring line carries instruments to measure ocean salinity, temperature, and currents. On some deployments, additional instrumentation is attached to the mooring to measure rainfall and bio-optical variability. The ETL instrumentation used during the 2003 cruise included a cloud radar, radiosonde balloons, and sensors for mean and turbulent surface meteorology. In addition to this work, buoy work was done in support of the Ecuadorian Navy Institute of Oceanography (INOCAR) and of the Chilean Navy Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service (SHOA). The surface buoy, oceanographic instrumentation, and upper 500 m of an INOCAR surface mooring at 2°S, 84°W that had been vandalized were recovered and transferred to the Ecuadorian Navy vessel B. A. E. Calicuchima. A tsunami warning mooring was installed at 75°W, 20°S for SHOA. SHOA personnel onboard were trained during the cruise by staff from the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) and National Data Buoy Center (NDBC). The cruise hosted two teachers participating in NOAA's Teacher at Sea Program, Deb Brice from San Marcos, California and Viviana Zamorano from Arica, Chile.

Description: Funding was provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uncer Contract Number NA17RJ1223.

Description: During the summer of 2002, six surface moorings and one subsurface mooring were deployed south of Martha's Vineyard, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The moorings were deployed from June to September 2002 to collect meteorological and oceanographic data. This was done both to support the Coupled Boundary Layered Air-Sea Transfer Low wind (CBLAST-Low) cooperative experiment and to address the question of regional predictability in the littoral regime under research supported by a Secretary of the Navy/Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Chair. The aim was to capture the mesoscale development and response of inner shelf waters to local synoptic atmospheric, tidal and larger scale oceanic forcing under predominantly low wind conditions. This report covers the operational aspects of the 2002 experiment, including deployment, recovery, and mooring setups, as well as basic data returns.

Description: Funding was provided by the Office of Naval Research under Contract Numbers N00014-01-1-0029 and N00014-99-1-0090.

Description: The long-range scientific objective of the Coupled Boundary Layer Air Sea Transfer (CBLAST) project is to observe and understand the temporal and spatial variability of the upper ocean, to identify the processes that determine that variability, and to examine its predictability. Air-sea interaction is of particular interest, but attention is also paid to the coupling of the sub-thermocline ocean to the mixed layer and to both the open ocean and littoral regimes. We seek to do this over a wide range of environmental conditions with the intent of improving our understanding of upper ocean dynamics and of the physical processes that determine the vertical and horizontal structure of the upper ocean. Field work for CBLAST was conducted during the summers of 2001, 2002, and 2003 off the south shore of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. The 2003 field work was conducted from the following platforms: heavy moorings, light moorings, drifters, F/V Nobska, CIRPAS Pelican aircraft, and an IR Cessna Aircraft. This report documents the 2003 field work and includes field notes, platform descriptions, discussion of data returns, and mooring logs. The 2003 Intensive Operating Period (IOP) was very successful and a high data return was seen.

Description: Funding was provided by the Office of Naval Research under contract numbers N00014-01-1-0029 and N00014-05-10090.

Description: The Long Term Evolution and Coupling of the Boundary Layers Study (referred to as the Stratus Project) is an effort to obtain a reliable multi-year dataset of meteorological and subsurface measurements beneath the stratus cloud deck off the coast of Chile and Peru. This data will improve our understanding of the role of clouds in ocean-atmosphere coupling. This project is part of the Eastern Pacific Investigation of Climate (EPIC), a NOAA-funded Climate Variability (CLIVAR) study. During the Stratus 2002 cruise, a surface mooring that had been deployed for one year off the coast of Chile was recovered, and a new surface mooring was deployed in the same location. The 2002 deployment starts the final year of a three-year occupation of the site by a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) mooring as part of the Enhanced Monitoring element of EPIC. The occupation of the site will be continued under the NOAA Climate Observations Program, with the mooring serving as a Surface Reference Site. The Stratus buoys were equipped with surface meteorological instrumentation, mainly two Improved METeorological (IMET) systems. The moorings also carried subsurface equipment attached to the mooring line, which measured conductivity, temperature, current direction and velocity, chlorophyll-a, and rainfall. The moorings were recovered and deployed by the Upper Ocean Processes Group of WHOI from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s R/V Melville. In collaboration with investigators from the Chilean Navy Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service (SHOA) and the University of Concepcion, Chile, conductivity, temperature, and depth (CTD) profiles were obtained at the mooring site and along 20°S while steaming east from the mooring site.

Description: Funding was provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under Grant Number NA17RJ1223.