Science Meetings

Early Results from SPURS-2: Multi-months Timeseries of Salinity, Rain, and Turbulence from Autonomous Gliders
Rainville, L., Drushka K., Eriksen, C., Farrar, T., Shcherbina, A., Thompson, E., Centurioni, L., Hormann, V., Hodges, B., and Schmitt, R. (24-May-17)

The SPURS-2 field program aims to understand the structure and variability of upper-ocean salinity in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean over more than one complete annual cycle. Since their deployments in August 2016, Seagliders have resolved salinity, temperature, density, and their lateral gradients, in the top 1000 m of the water column on horizontal scales of 20 km and time scales on the order of the inertial period in the central SPURS-2 region. Shear and temperature microstructure sensors provide near real-time estimates of turbulence in the upper ocean for every dive. All SPURS-2 gliders are equipped with passive acoustic recorders, which will be used to infer rain rate and wind speed. In close collaboration with the other SPURS PIs, we aim to understand how precipitation and atmospheric forcing act to govern the ITCZ upper ocean variability.

This presentation included several animations which are provided here: Slide 5 | Slide 15 | Slide 16