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
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!
Photos from around Pt Sal from the air.
I wanted to share a few quick images of things we saw from the air today (it’s pretty amazing!). Times and general locations are indicated below. Looking northwest from Pt. Sal out to the Sally Ride (1324 PDT). Bloom and rips just north of Mussel Pt (1406 PDT). Sally Ride transiting inshore of an internal bore front (1423 PDT)