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MOOMZ 20 Apr 2009; TS impressions

Amanda, Ricardo,

Here's my impression of the TS diagram:

MOOMZ 19 Apr 2009

I'm trying a drastic change in the science file to see if I can make any impact on the energy consumption. Right now the power remaining should get us to end of July, and this may work well for the timing of a MOOMZ cruise, but if the cruise gets delayed further having sg157 last as long as possible will be a priority. Here's the new science:
// Science for OSU sg157 and/or sg158 with PAR sensor
/depth time sample gcint
50 4 1111 60
150 4 1111 120
250 52 1110 180
600 104 1110 300
1000 104 1100 360

MOOMZ SG157 - Line 5

Here is a plot of the upper 400 meters of the latest seaglider section off of Iquique (27 March - 07 April 2009, onshore to offshore track). On a hunch I plotted salinity contour lines on top of the oxygen (upper right) and backscattering (middle right) data. It seems that there is tight coupling between salinity and both O2 and bb. Before seeing these data, I would have guessed that variability in the deep oxycline would be driven by intrusions of water masses with different density and oxygen characteristics. Likewise with the bottom boundary of the intermediate depth scattering maximum. However, given what we see here, the story seems to be a bit more interesting than that! Why would salinity be more influential than density in regulating these distributions?

MOOMZ 13 Apr 2009

The change to the science file didn't result in any substantial energy savings. See the blue line on the plot below

Ideally the blue and red curves, should parallel one another. We'll have to try something more severe in terms of sampling the lower portion of the water column to save energy.

Oregon Shelf: Transition to Upwelling

At the beginning of April, we had some extended 20 kt bursts of northerly winds off the Oregon shelf,

(image from www.orcoos.org)
and the glider observations show the upwelling response in the coasatal ocean with deep, cool, salty, low oxygen water moving up onto the shelf.

In addition, to the deep water moving up onto the shelf, the fresh water in the surface layer moves off the shelf, and phytoplankton blooms can be seen in the near surface chlorophyll fluorescence measurements. Compare these sections with the clasic winter conditions below.

MOOMZ 08 Apr 2009

Dive 236 uploaded new science file to decrease energy consumption and match buoyancy energy rate.

// Science for OSU sg157 and/or sg158 with PAR sensor
/depth time sample gcint
50 4 1111 60
150 4 1111 120
250 16 1110 180
600 52 1110 300
1000 104 1100 360

The projected recovery date is currently end of July, this may buy us some more time.