Our main SOLAS project HiWASE has now begun in earnest with the mobilisation of the Norwegian weather ship Polarfront at the beginning of September. The aim of the project is to make direct measurement of the turbulent air-sea fluxes of sensible and latent heat, momentum and CO2 in order to improve the parameterisation of these fluxes in terms of mean meteorological and sea-state variables. We hope to obtain data in a wide range of conditions, particularly the poorly-understood high wind speed regime. In order to do this the instrumentation on the Polarfront will operate continuously for 3 years.
Mobilising the ship in less than 5 days was a challenge even for 4 people (me, Robin Pascal, Ben Moat and Steve Harrison). As well as the Autoflux system the installation included: a microTSG as part of the underway pCO2 system run by the university of Bergen; a directional wave radar system complete with separate 6 foot X-band scanner; hardware re-calibration and software upgrades for the existing ship-borne wave recorder; and a digital camera system on the bridge. All this was made a little more complicated since the usual method of running cables all over the ship could not be used, which meant installing a wireless network to retrieve data from the numerous sensors located in various parts of the ship. At the same time colleagues from the Norwegian Met Office were busily replacing the ships entire existing network and the ships crew were occupied by the Polarfronts 30-year recertification.
Everything was just about done in time for the ship setting sail for Station Mike (66 N, 2E) on Friday 8th. Ben and Steve headed home and me and Robin began to find our way around the ship. This did not take long since the Polarfront is small, smaller than the RRS Challenger at less than 50 m long and under 1,000 tons. Getting to know who the other people on board are was also quite a short process since the ship is run by a crew of only 7 people who also make all the meteorological observations: having scientists on board is a real novelty for the crew. Despite the ships size she is perfectly formed for her purpose. All year round the Polarfront spends all bar one day a month on station, drifting beam-on to the wind and waves. On most ships this would be an unpleasant experience but the Polarfront was designed for the purpose and is surprisingly comfortable (and miraculously free of rust).
more next week.