Graduate students Alex and Spencer have been capturing drone footage of rip currents along the beach by our radar site and comparing optical versus radar observations. Above left is a snapshot of one. Rip neck and rip head are evident by their entrained sediment. Rip head is particularly interesting with its intermediate scale wave breaking and smaller scale instabilities along … Read More
Sally Ride soliton measurements
While this experiment highlights the integration of measurements made across our small armada, the scientists on each ship also integrate data from several instrument platforms. On Sally Ride, we are chasing solitons like those seen in the aerial photos from a previous post. We are using a profiling instrument (affectionately known as the Very Merry Profiler) cast over the stern … Read More
Tidal variability of headland eddy shedding
The Sally Ride and Oceanus are both wrapping up long (36-48 hour) repeat sections down here at Pt. Sal before heading back to Oceano. Following up on the Sounder post below, we have also been intrigued by the strongly time-dependent nature of the wake eddies being shed south of Pt. Sal. The figure above shows 15 passes around our “L” … Read More
Oceanographers use this one weird trick to see internal waves!
Click-bait headline aside, we did see some fairly astounding internal wave characteristics in combing through the airborne IR data today. Specifically, Melissa and our pilot Dave flew a final transect along a bore front about 5 miles offshore Pt Sal and saw this: The view shows an IR snapshot of a portion of an internal wave packet, looking perpendicular to … Read More
APL flight highlights
The APL plane flew for about 5 hours today in the afternoon and early evening. Lots to see! See below for a few highlight photos. Also see Chris’s post from earlier today for even more good stuff!