By Eric Lindstrom The SPURS work has renewed interest in the broader community in studying the ocean to better understand the global water cycle, heating and cooling of the oceans, and oceanic mixing. Julian Schanze of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution/MIT is about to complete his Ph.D. in physical oceanography under the supervision of Ray Schmitt. […]
By Eric Lindstrom The thermosalinograph (TSG) on Knorr is a shipboard instrument for measuring temperature and salinity of the near surface water . It is situated in a lab and receives a flow of water taken in near the bow and piped out near the stern. It is quite an adventure going down to see […]
By Eric Lindstrom The Research Vessel Knorr is a fantastically capable oceanographic research vessel. She has traveled over 2 million miles and explored all the major oceans in her around 40 years of service. As a visiting oceanography research crew, we have our space on the ship, for which we have free run. We are […]
By Eric Lindstrom There are not many places in the open ocean that get their own special name as a “sea.” Most seas are what we call marginal seas – offshoots of the major ocean basins. The Sargasso Sea, as a vast track of the western subtropical North Atlantic Ocean is known, has a special […]
By Eric Lindstrom After several weeks of your following my postings from the field, I thought it would be good to tell you a little about myself. Maybe that will help explain the weird wanderings of the blog or the subject matters I choose to write about. Let’s start at the beginning: I grew up […]
By Eric Lindstrom From the shipboard perspective, all we really see of the sea is the surface. Of course we can see into the water a short way, right close to the ship, but not very far. The horizon is 360 degrees and the great dome of sky seems endless. Being that we are about […]
By Eric Lindstrom When we are doing work at sea, it hardly seems fair for NASA to hog the limelight. We are usually offering data from satellites, not ships, moorings, or gliders. There are partner agencies in the U.S. Government who make enormous contributions to the physical oceanography enterprise. In D.C., oceanographers know these agencies […]
By Eric Lindstrom SPURS Chief Scientist Ray Schmitt has been thinking about the salt in the ocean for a long time. He did his PhD thesis on an unusual form of mixing called “salt fingers,” which we will discuss in a later post. This small scale mixing process led him to consider the origins of […]
By Eric Lindstrom One of the things that we worry about on the ship, as part of our daily routine, is trash. Nothing goes over the side unless it is biodegradable. We have separate trash cans for plastics, foils, and other such material that would pollute the ocean. There are cans with paper liners for […]
By Eric Lindstrom The central mooring at the SPURS site is a critical piece of gear. It will provide us with a time series of upper ocean properties at one location over the entire year. We’ll build the other SPURS measurements around this spot on this and future voyages. We’ll “fly” the gliders in patterns […]
