Here’s a quick work up of the SWIFT drifts around Pt Sal from the previous few days. The drifts are all southwards (releases are at the northernmost points for each track), and the color scale is the log10 of the TKE dissipation rate averaged over the upper 5 m. Looks like there is a region of high dissipation were the … Read More
SIO Airborne Flight (9/15/17)
Today the SIO Melville lab had a successful 4.5 hour flight. There were no clouds on site for the duration of the flight and the wind picked up for good wave measurements with the lidar. The flight track included multiple high altitude alongshore passes to capture an overview of the area as well as nine separate cross shore legs at … Read More
Bring on the wind!
What a difference a day makes. Here’s a photo of a CTD launch on Oceanus this morning (9/15) giving data as we pass through these internal waves visible on the echosounder The vertical profiles show two groupings, as the internal waves heave the thermocline up and down. With some clever changes in the plotting scale, you can make fun patterns … Read More
SIO Airborne Flight (9/14/17)
Today the SIO Melville lab was limited by a persistent cloud layer but we were still able to fit in a 3.5 hour flight at a reduced altitude of 2000ft. We flew a grid pattern above the ship tracks near Guadalupe, alongshore tracks from Oceano to Purisima Point, and cross-shore tracks originating from Guadalupe and Purisima Point. Click on images … Read More
Evidence of cross-shore exchange at Oceano 20 m isobath
Here’s a quick plot from one of Sounder’s laps around the inshore box today (14 Sep 2017). The first leg goes along the 20 m isobath from the NW corner to the southwest corner. The upper 10 m of water is headed onshore (red) at ~20 cm/s, and the lower 10 m of water is headed offshore at ~ 20 … Read More