Weekly Report #5. April 21, 2014.

Lynne Talley (SIO) and Brendan Carter (Princeton)

The CLIVAR/GO-SHIP P16S cruise passed north of 50°S at the start of this week, sailed on past 40°S, and we are now working towards the mid 30°s. The weather improved dramatically just past 50°S and gave us a long stretch of much-needed routine work. Because of major weather delays in the previous weeks, we increased our station spacing to 40 nm, and are now working at a steady pace of 2 to 3 stations per day. We are mostly able to sample while underway, and stations are being occupied at a good pace. An extratropical storm yesterday pushed us back into memories of last week’s poor weather, and necessitated sampling on station.

The switch to the backup CTD wire at the end of week 4 was completely successful after a days’ very hard work on the part of the ETs and MTs who got the setup rigged and the winch in top working order. The switch to outside coincided with conditions that make sampling more comfortable every day.

Milestones this week: We completed 18 morestations, moving clearly into the subtropical gyre and our deepest stations, in the Southwest Pacific Basin. We completed all of the biogeochemical float deployments. All 12 floats are reporting and the data are being posted. We continue to make nearly real-time comparisons with the shipboard lab analyses. We also completed the last of our 30 surface drifter deployments and are receiving data from those that were deployed.

Some fun around the last couple of floats when we were cleared to have “float signings” (left). An Easter wombat visited the Palmer on Sunday leaving 68 tiny origami candy boxes hidden all over the labs.

Some science highlights: excellent quality data from all groups! Compared with 2005, oxygen continues to increase in the ventilated subtropical thermocline. The pioneering nitrous oxide is looking great. Speculations rife about the energetic subthermocline eddy or internal wave at a station outside the ACC’s eddy field with westward flow > 30 cm/sec at 1200-1800m, and 300 m isopycnal deflections.