Saildrones

A fleet of seven Unmanned Opens external link in new windowSurface Vehicle saildrones (link) will participate in the Opens internal link in current windowEUREC4A-OA and Opens external link in new windowATOMIC campaign, and extend the air-sea interaction measurements from boreal winter to summer (January-July 2020). The saildrones will operate in the larger ocean area around Barbados, particularly in the two ocean eddy corridors: 1) Between the Opens internal link in current windowBarbados Cloud Observatory (BCO) and the moored Northwest Tropical Atlantic Station (NTAS) buoy in the Easterlies Alley; 2) Southeast of BCO in the North Brazil Current Ring corridor. The extra instrumentation on board the fleet of saildrones was selected to complement the EUREC4A-OA and ATOMIC shipboard and airborne observation with air-sea interaction measurements at the ocean mesoscale and submesoscales (10m-300km). During the intensive observation period (IOP) (January-February, 2020), the saildrone fleet will be coordinated with the participating research vessels (Opens internal link in current windowR/V L'Atalante,Opens internal link in current window R/V Maria S. Merian, Opens internal link in current windowR/V Meteor, and Opens internal link in current windowR/V Ron Brown), the research aircraft, and other autonomous observing platforms (Opens internal link in current windowocean gliders, profiling Argo floats, surface drifters, and unmanned aerial drones launched from research vessels). The unique combination of observing platforms will enable the simultaneous observation of the lower-atmosphere and the upper-ocean with an unprecedented spatio-temporal multi-scale sampling. After the IOP, the two NOAA funded saildrones will continue their observation till July 2020, while the rest of the saildrone fleet will return to Barbados for recovery.

Instrumentation:

PI/Science Contact:

Technical Contact:

Nora Cohen (nora@we dont want spamsaildrone.com) and/or
Sebastien de Halleux (sebastien@we dont want spamsaildrone.com)
Saildrone


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