Real-Time Vertical Temperature, and Velocity Profiles from a Wave Glider

• Main Author: Centurioni, Luca
• Other Authors: SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY LA JOLLA CA
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: Physical and Dynamic Oceanography; Marine Engineering; *GLIDERS; *OCEANOGRAPHIC DATA; POSITION(LOCATION); REAL TIME; TEMPERATURE; VELOCITY; WATER TEMPERATURE; WATER VELOCITY; ADOS(AUTONOMOUS DRIFTING OCEAN STATIONS); Pacific; Scripps; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA590446; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA590446

In the past decade, the Lagrangian Drifter Group at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) has taken part in several ONR-sponsored oceanographic experiments with in-house developed autonomous instruments designed to measure vertical profiles of water temperature and three dimensional water velocity as well as atmospheric parameters. This class of instrument is termed ADOS (Autonomous Drifting Ocean Station) and several variants exist. The ADOS-A, which measures temperature and velocity (A for ADCP) profiles in the 0-200 meter range, was used in the South China Sea during the NLIWI experiment [Centurioni, 2010]. The Restrained (R) version of the latter, the R-ADOS-A was used during the QPE experiment [Gawarkiewicz et al., 2011] to control the displacement of the sensors due to the swift tidal currents that occur near the shelf break of the East China Sea continental shelf. The M-ADOS-A, which is an ADOS-A fitted with a suite of meteorological (hence the M) sensors (sea-level air pressure, wind, and solar radiation) was air deployed successfully in the western Pacific Ocean in September 2010 during the ITOP experiment. ADOS platforms are also deployed by the NOAA funded Global Drifter Program in the north Atlantic during the hurricane season to measure the thermal structure of the ocean ahead of storms and in their wakes. Both the ADOS-A and the MADOS- A are freely drifting non-Lagrangian (i.e. non water-following) devices and the R-ADOS-A has a passive position-control feature that consists of a variable-length section of metal chain designed to exert a significant drag at the bottom without blowing down the surface expression of the instrument in strong currents. The endurance of the ADOS class of instruments is typically one to three months.