Very Cool Gives a Spatial Look at the Oceans Every Day

CODAR – surface measurements only

Very cool – gives a spatial look at the oceans every day.

CODAR is the name of a company supplying most of these instruments ( There is a nice review of this High Frequency radar at including the use of HF radar for mapping currents as well as a FAQ page. Information from CODAR is used by researchers, Coast Guard (search and rescue as well as hazardous spills), and the public.

Gliders – subsurface measurements

First deployment off this coast in 97/98.

The Slocum glider is designed for shallow coastal work with a depth max of 200 meters. The SPRAY is a deeper glider (Scripps developed and these are used by many institutions including WHOI that developed the following webpage http://www.whoi.edu/instruments/viewInstrument.do?id=1498 ) and the Sea Glider is the deepest reaching 2000 meters (Univ. of Washington - http://www.apl.washington.edu/projects/seaglider/summary.html).

Powered by 254 C-cell batteries housed in the front main section and are used also for buoyancy control. The front is the fore-wet section which takes in or sends out about a cup of seawater to change the buoyancy. The science payload is in the center. Every glider has a SBE CTD ( There are more batteries in the aft section along with the computers. The aft wet section has some additional sensors and an air bladder. When surfacing, this air bladder is inflated enabling the antennas in the tail fin to have better communication. Communication can be via satellite (Iridium - ), ARGOS (indirect via satellite - http://noaasis.noaa.gov/ARGOS/ ), or radio Freewave modem ( - line of sight).

 Electric pump alternately forces seawater into and out of the forward wet section

 Buoyancy alternates between positive and negative causing the vertical velocity

 Wings convert the vertical motion into horizontal motion. Pattern is adjusted using different wings

 Travels in saw-tooth pattern through the water column towards a waypoint

 Typical vertical speed ~17-25 cm/s

 Typical horizontal speed ~23-28 cm/sec

 Typical 1 second sampling ~ 17-25 cm vertical resolution

 Typical speeds = horizontal resolution just over twice the cast depth (relative to the water motion)

 Can stay out for up to 40 days depending on payload requirements

 Safety feature – after no communication for 16 hours, a weight is released from the back increasing positive buoyancy.

Science payloads include

Hydroscat2, ‘pucks’ measuring backscatter, fluorometer, ‘breve buster’ – looking for Karenia brevis in the water column (Here’s a presentation by Barbara Kirkpatrick - , light attenuation

LEO-15

RU07 and RU09 being deployed today along the NJ Endurance line (Endurance refers to a type of observatory system).

RU05 deployed currently off of Hawaii

LaTTE – Lagrangian Transport and Transformation Experiment

Just finished this experiment looking at the freshwater flow coming out of New York Harbor. http://marine.rutgers.edu/cool/latte/latte_tech2006.htm is the homepage for this experiment and has background information, technology information, etc. This includes links to the glider data - http://marine.rutgers.edu/cool/auvs/?page=deployments

CODAR maps – red is faster water… looking at the hourly codar maps of the Hudson River Plume gives researchers a great view of the plume.

Injected the dye into the plume and then the wind shifted causing the plume and dye to head shoreward. Then the tide changed bringing the dye back out and in conjunction with the seabreeze, a great nearshore recirculation started - a potential incubator with the nutrient rich water (Hudson River influence) hanging offshore. Started experiments adding grazers, but phytoplankton levels kept increasing (too big for grazers which were eating smaller phytoplankton, but also ‘pooping’ thus generating more nutrients). “You can’t eat anything bigger than your head” was the summary of this experiment. There are a lot of modeling tools for the LaTTE Process Study:

Atmospheric models, Ocean physics, biogeochemical models.

Our mission is to deliver oceanographic data and concepts to various user groups in the appropriate format “bringing the ocean to the world”.