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Blog Entry 3 of 4 Cruising for Carbon
Why go to one of the windiest latitudes on Earth to learn about future global warming? Scientists from around the U.S., including CU’s Ludovic Bariteau, with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, are embarking on a 6-week research cruise to measure how much greenhouse gas the Southern Ocean swallows up during high winds and choppy seas. Read more and watch videos at http://cires.colorado.edu/science/field/gasex/

Blog Url: http://denver.yourhub.com/~CIRESnews

Giant petrels, dolphins, and snow!

Contributed by: Adriana Bailey   on 4/4/2008

I always look forward to receiving emails from my landlubber friends (thanks, Greg, for teaching me this new word) who are following the blog and asking me questions about life at sea.

Am I seeing amazing sunsets? What about marine animals? Have I seen any icebergs?

Unfortunately, colorful sunsets are quite rare in the Great Southern Ocean, mainly because this is a storm path where low pressure systems traveling eastward bring cloudy weather and precipitation. Last night it was cold enough that we got snow! I was amazed to see snow over the ocean for the first time in my life.

These stormy weather systems also create the high winds -- the "Furious Fifties" -- which are the reason for conducting our gas exchange experiments here. The highest winds we've encountered have reached 35 knots (about 40 mph).

So far, our flux instruments have been running continuously. However, every once in a while, an unexpected hardware problem occurs. When the problem is up in the mast, you can't just go up and repair it; you have to wait until the weather calms.

A few days ago, I was able to climb the jackstaff - the vertical pole at the front of the ship -- to repair one of our sensors. It was kind of exiting...like climbing a tree about to topple over at any moment.

To conduct measurements of fluxes and near-surface meteorology, we use a variety of high frequency sensors. The "heart" of the flux system is composed of a sonic anemometer and a motion pack mounted on the jackstaff. The anemometer measures the three directions and speeds of the wind, and the motion pack records the ship's movements. By combining both signals, we are able to correct for the motion of the ship and obtain a measurement of the wind as if it were taken from a fixed platform.

The rest of the flux menagerie includes:

* Very fast CO2/hygrometers
* Temperature and humidity sensors
* Pyranometers and pyrgeometers, which measure short and long wave radiation from the sky
* An atmospheric pressure sensor
* A sea surface temperature sensor
* A laser rangefinder wave gauge that measures wave height
* An optical rain gauge
* A fast ozone sensor (for more info on it, read here).
* A fast DMS instrument from University of Hawaii

Most of these instruments are located at the front of the ship, ahead of the engine and air-conditioner exhausts.

Finally, from the corrected wind velocities and with the other sensor measurements, we calculate all the desired fluxes between the atmosphere and ocean: momentum, sensible heat, latent (moist) heat, ozone, DMS and CO2 fluxes. Voila!


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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Adriana Bailey

Boulder , CO

Adriana Bailey has posted 4 blog entries and 0 comments since joining on 3/10/2008. Adriana Bailey 's average blog rating is 5.
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