Only a few more days left …so don’t forget to send any thoughts you have on the experiment graphci.

Today, as our internet is still down on the site I wanted to show you some of the information from the NTAS buoy. NTAS stands for the Northwest Tropical Atlantic Station. The buoy is shown in A1 relative to other buoys (41300 and 41040) and proposed ship array measurements for EUREC⁴A. The Buoy is rather sophisticated and swapped for a replacement one once a year, the new one (number 16)  started operations on January 30th, roughly three weeks ago.

In A2 I show the year of measurements from its predecessor. What I find most interesting are: (i) the downward spikes on the temperature signals, which I presume are either lunching Frigate birds or cold pools; (ii) and its measure of the annual cycle in surface temperature, which is roughly 2deg C with temperatures maximizing in November. What is also interesting is the flux measurements, with the minimum amount of downwelling LW radiation (if I interpret LRAD right in A3) in the EUREC4A period. The max min range is about 80 W/m^2; this would have a marked influence on the boundary layer cooling given that boundary layer moisture changes little (see RH in A2).  

To get a view of the time-series in higher resolution look at A4 and A5. Here what I found interesting is the slackening of the winds in the days after Feb 12th, and this was associated with more downward solar, less downward IR, and maybe a somewhat drier PBL.

All the data is available from here:

http://www.oceansites.org

and more information about the buoy is here:

http://uop.whoi.edu/currentprojects/NTAS/ntasarchive.html