website) in case you are interested in the details of the work that we
are getting done out here. This post is mostly personal reflections on
the difficulties of working at sea:
Bracing, exhausting, terrifying, exhilarating, annoying... the
Southern Ocean has a unique flavor of hospitality that can be any or all
of these things, depending on how tired you are and what exactly you are
trying to do. Half of us are transitioning to some variety of night
shift so many of us are quite tired. As for what we're trying to do,
well, we're trying to lower a ~2 ton contraption of lead, steel,
electronics, and plastic on a wire from the ocean surface to thirty feet
above the ocean floor, a point about 2 to 3 miles below. This is all
done from a boat that is lurching about in 10 to 20 foot waves...
.. about 110 times.
The waves are always big in the Southern Ocean in my experience―even in
calm weather―but I've lost count of the number of low pressure systems
that have passed overheard on their eastward march in the prevailing
winds. Each day, I've gotten up to see a weather report laden with the
tightly spiraling isobars indicating high winds and the big red blotches
suggesting large waves. Somewhere in the middle of it is a forlorn set
of dots indicating where we'll be....
As an aside, these weather forecasts aren't as reliable here as
elsewhere. This is because the models that produce the forecasts
survive by consuming data voraciously, and we're probably the only ones
dumb enough to be down here making measurements.
.. Anyway, storms and gales aren't unexpected here. The consistently
strong winds, powerful currents, and big waves in the Southern Ocean are
all symptoms of the atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns that
make this place such a critical piece of Earth's climate system. They
are part of the reason I'm so excited to be here. More on this in a
later blog post…
Fortunately, we are still getting work done despite the rough
conditions thanks to the experience of our scientists and crew, and to
the immense planning that goes into these research expeditions. Our
first deployment of the rosette saw several sensors fail despite
everything having been rigorously tested before being sent out to sea.
A sensor failing on the first cast is not surprising. The pressure at
the bottom of our deployment is ~500 times atmospheric, and even a drop
a seawater can spell doom for anything electronic. Also, oceanography
is done from ports around the world, and just shipping things out to the
boat can be enough to damage them. For many sensors, there is no way to
test them properly at sea besides putting them into the water and
comparing their readings to independent measurements. Fortunately,
protocol has us use two sensors each for dissolved oxygen concentrations
and salinity (saltiness), so these critical measurements were still
recorded despite the primary sensors going offline. Protocol also got
the rosette back aboard the Palmer without incident when the altimeter
didn't pick up the ocean floor. In the end we got all of the data we
needed from that stress test of a first deployment, and our scientists
and technicians quickly swapped out all suspect parts with spares.
Anyway, I'm not typically the type to get excited about phrases like
"standard operating procedures" and "planned redundancy" but these ideas
are simply necessary for a global science conducted in extreme
environments.
We also owe a special thanks to our marine technicians. They minded
the wire in the winch room (where the wire is spooled out to lower the
rosette) while near-freezing water poured in, sloshed about, and rushed
out of the deployment bay with each rock of the boat and slap of a wave.
Mostly though, this update is just to say that we're still on schedule
and that things are going as smoothly as we could hope. We've deployed
three floats and gotten calibration profiles for each one, all while
steaming inexorably toward the main line of P16S way points. The
weather is keeping things interesting, but it is letting us look forward
to a time when our biggest concerns will be keeping ourselves and our
instruments at maximum efficiency.
I'm going to try to attach a short time lapse of waves coming over our
starboard bow. I'm not sure if it will work given our limited bandwidth,
but it is worth a shot.
PS: This update is nearly a week out of date, but we are all still
alive and well!
No comments:
Post a Comment