Start of TRR financed ex­ped­i­tion M180 SON­ETT

Ex­ped­i­tion M180 SON­ETT (Syn­op­tic Obser­va­tions - a Nes­ted ap­proach to study Energy Trans­fer & Tur­bu­lence in the ocean) is a key part of the ocean ob­ser­va­tions in the second phase of TRR181 'En­ergy trans­fers in At­mo­sphere and Ocean'. The ex­ped­i­tion will take sci­ent­ists to an ocean re­gion where they can ob­serve many pro­cesses that af­fect en­ergy fluxes in the ocean and the ocean's ex­change with the at­mo­sphere.

Re­search­ers from MARUM - Cen­ter for Mar­ine and En­vir­on­mental Sci­ences at the Uni­versity of Bre­men, the Uni­versity of Bre­men, the Uni­versity of Ham­burg, the In­sti­tute for Baltic Sea Re­search Warnemünde (IOW) and the Helm­holtz Cen­ter Hereon are in­volved.

The work­ing area is loc­ated south­east of the Walvis Ridge in the east­ern South At­lantic. In this re­gion, the so-called Agul­has ed­dies, which are formed at the south­ern tip of Africa and mi­grate north­ward through the At­lantic, meet in­ternal tides gen­er­ated at the Walvis Ridge, and af­fect the propaga­tion of in­ternal tidal waves. The ed­dies form fronts and so-called fil­a­ments at their edges. Fil­a­ments are struc­tures that form where dif­fer­ent wa­ter masses meet. They look like elong­ated fin­gers on satel­lite im­ages. The planned ob­ser­va­tions in­clude sur­face fluxes and waves, sur­face layer pro­cesses, meso­scale and submeso­scale vari­ab­il­ity, ho­ri­zontal mix­ing, in­ternal wave en­ergy fluxes, the in­ter­ac­tion between in­ternal waves and ed­dies, and the en­ergy dis­sip­a­tion in the ocean in­terior.

The ob­ser­va­tions will be com­ple­men­ted by runs of a high-res­ol­u­tion ocean cir­cu­la­tion model with tidal for­cing (ICON SMT-WAVE) from the Max Planck In­sti­tute for Met­eor­o­logy in Ham­burg, Ger­many, which will al­low to con­tex­tu­al­ize the ob­ser­va­tions, un­der­stand pro­cesses, and char­ac­ter­ize the en­ergy bal­ance of this ocean re­gion.

The ex­ped­i­tion starts on Feb­ru­ary 23 in Mon­tevideo (Ur­uguay), on April 14 the team is ex­pec­ted back with MET­EOR in Cape Town (South Africa).

The re­search­ers will re­port on life and work on board in a lo­g­book: https://www.marum.de/en/Discover/Logbuch-M180.html

Find here the according press release.