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Feb 7 | Feb 8 | Feb 9 | Feb 10 | Feb 11 | Feb 12 | Feb 13 | Feb 14 | Feb 15 | Feb 16 | Feb 17 | Feb 18 Feb 19 | Feb 20 | Feb 21 | Feb 22 | Feb 23 | Feb 24 | Feb 25 | Feb 26 | Feb 27 Now we know why there's not much data for this area in February. We are still being battered by 15 ft seas and 30-40 knot winds (with gusts up to 50 knots!) which limited the seasoar operations to 1400-2100 local time today. We did manage to get 3 frontal crossings. The temperature contrast between the surface mixed layer and the underlying warm-core ring water on the outer edge of the shelf was 8 degrees C (46.4° F)! We continue to see westward flow of 50-80 cm/s on the outer shelf as well. Robert Bates, the mate on the R/V Endeavor, reported the ship moved 50 feet off course to the west almost instantaneously when we hit a strong shear zone near the surface outcrop of the front. Surprisingly, despite the winds and seas, the sea surface temperature at the present moment is 13.3 degrees C - nearly 60 degrees F! A P3 flew out at 1130 today and bombarded us with sus shots to listen for. We could hear the charges through the ship's hull. These don't compare at all to the daily sonic *booms* of the SST Concord flying by. This afternoon, we moved up to the vla and checked its status via an RF radio link. The vla had stopped gathering data, so it had to be restarted. We also noticed some of the hydrophones were rather noisy. Nevertheless, a number of them are still working perfectly. The Harvard modeling group have run their latest forecast model. They combined recent CTDs, AXBTs, and seasoar data with feature models of a warm core ring and the shelfbreak front to initialize their forecast model for Feb. 18 which can be seen in the top panel of this image. The lower panel is a projection for two days later on the 20th. The science continues, despite the weather...
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©Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution |
| Last updated August 2008 |
