An Autonomous Oceanographic Instrument Array

• Main Author: Owens, W. B.
• Other Authors: WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION MA
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1999
• Subjects: Physical and Dynamic Oceanography; *OCEANOGRAPHIC EQUIPMENT; TEMPERATURE; DEPLOYMENT; FLOATS; SALINITY; HEAT LOSS; LABRADOR SEA; AUTONOMOUS FLOATS; Ari; Labrador Sea
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA361378; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA361378

Under this DURIP grant, ten profiling ALACE autonomous floats were procured and prepared for deployment. These floats included vertical velocity measurements at depth. They also provided profiles of temperature and salinity every time that they traveled from depth to the surface to transmit both the vertical velocity data and the profile data using the ARGOS system. There floats were deployed in February, 1997 on cruise 147 of the R.V. Knonr under the direction of R. Pickart as part of the ONR ARI Oceanic Convection Experiment. The data from these floats are being combined with those from other profiling floats to provide a statistical description of convection during the late winter cooling seasons for 1997 and 1998. The profile data will be combined with similar data from other profiling floats deployed as part of the Convection Experiment and as the Atlantic Circulation and Climate Experiment to estimate the effects of the heat loss on the structure of the temperature and salinity fields in the Labrador Sea.