Glider Cruise Report No. 1. Bellamite and Dynamite, 15 Sep-24 Nov 2008 and 21 May-21 Jul 2009: RAPID glider deployment report

Abstract

This report describes the trial glider operations conducted as part of the RAPID-MOC projectconducted between 15 September – 24 November 2008 and 21 May – 21 July 2009 betweenthe Canary Islands and the coast of Morocco.The RAPID-MOC mooring array at 26.5°N is designed to quantify the strength and variabilityof the transport of mass and heat associated with the Atlantic meridional overturningcirculation (MOC). Currently the majority of the measurements are made from mooredinstruments.The objective of this study was to assess the contribution that autonomous gliders could maketo the monitoring array. In particular the focus was on the use of gliders on the shallow easternboundary of the North Atlantic. This is the part of the RAPID array that has suffered thegreatest loss of instruments, in large part due to suspected fishing activity on the continentalslope. Furthermore, initial results (Chidichimo 2009) from the first three years of the RAPIDarray have shown that the largest contribution to the seasonal variation in the MOC is thevariability of density on the eastern boundary in the upper 1000m.It is expected that gliders will be less susceptible to loss by fishing than the mooredinstruments. Another advantage of gliders is that data are retrieved in real-time via Iridiumsatellite communications, further reducing the risk of data loss.http://www.noc.soton.soton.ac.uk/rapidmocand/orhttp://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/omf/projects/glider<br/