RV Ronald H. Brown Cruise RB0701, 21 Mar-10 Apr 2007. RAPID mooring cruise report

Abstract

This report describes the mooring operations conducted during RV Ronald H. Brown Cruise RB0701 conducted between 21 March 2007 and 10 April 2007. These mooring operations were completed as part of the United Kingdom Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funded RAPID Programme to monitor the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation at 26.5ºN. The primary purpose of this cruise was to service the Western Boundary section of the 26.5ºN mooring array first deployed in 2004 during RRS Discovery cruises D277 and D278 (SOC cruise report number 53), and serviced in 2005 during RRS Charles Darwin Cruise CD170 and RV Knorr Cruise KN182-2 (NOCS cruise report number 2), RRS Charles Darwin Cruise CD177 (NOCS cruise report number 5), and in 2006 on RV Ronald H. Brown Cruise RB0602, RRS Discovery Cruise D304 (NOCS cruise report number 16) and FS Poseidon Cruises P343 and P345 (NOCS cruise report number 28). Cruise RB0701 was from Charleston, SC to San Juan, Puerto Rico, and covered the Western Boundary moorings deployed on RB0602 (along with two landers deployed on KN182-2). This cruise is the third annual refurbishment of the Western Boundary section of an array of moorings deployed across the Atlantic in order to set up a preoperational prototype system to continuously observe the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC). This array will be further refined and refurbished during subsequent years. The instrumentation deployed on the array consists of a variety of current meters, bottom pressure recorders, CTD loggers and Inverted Echosounders, which, combined with time series measurements of the Florida Channel Current and wind stress estimates, will be used to determine the strength and structure of the MOC at 26.5ºN. (http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/rapidmoc