climode-iss2: DAILY Messages: 23 Entries..

Daily Report for March 22

Weather overcast and foggy, visibility this morning less than a mile, 
southerly breeze.  

Due to arrive in port at Woods Hole around 1pm local,16 UT.

Turned RASS amp off 1230UT as crew on deck preparing for docking.

Launched last radiosonde at 12 UT - number 100!

Daily Report for March 21

Much cooler today as we exited the main part of the Gulf Stream last night.
We did re-enter a warm pool during the day, however air temperatures
reminaed cool.

Clear skies early, scattered Cu later. Seas gradually calming.
Winds northerly changing to easterlies.

Three hourly soundings.  We had 4 of the 8 soundings lock-up after losing 
signal around 300mb, will have to recover in post-processing.
Plan a sounding at 3UT and a final sounding at 12UT tomorrow morning.

The power conditioner beeped occasionally today.  It's low voltage is on
(fault light has been on since installation - presumeably be cause of the
ship's earth).  Checked voltage with fluke - 112V.

Adjusted RASS temperature for cooler temperatures 15Z.

Daily Report for March 20

Weather gradually deteriorating during the day as another cold front
approaches this evening.  Fortunately this one should be fairly brief.

We are now traveling northwest and should cross over the Gulf Stream boundary
tonight.

Six hourly sondes until 18Z, then increased to three hourly sondes.

We picked up a radiosonde from some where else this evening (0Z).
I locked onto it with the GAUS software and could decode the data so
we tuned our 0Z sonde to 402.2MHz.
  

Daily Report for March 19

Weather has calmed down from yesterday, although there were still a few
brief showers and the sea was still a little rough.  Winds switched
from westerly to northly.

Sailing mainly westard. Six hourly soundings.  Had a couple lock-up so 
will have to recover that data in post-processing.

RASS - some of the foam on one of the speaker surrounds has become partly
unglued on a couple of panels.  These panels have a triple layer of foam
and only the outer layer is peeling off.

Expecting another weaker front tomorrow night.

Daily Report March 18

We went through a cold front this morning - 50 knot winds and big seas.

The profiler worked okay, although during the worst of it the spectra
looked rather smeared and it seems that the stablized platform was having 
trouble keeping up (tilt data on the platform was up to 10 degrees).

Three hourly soundings except for 15Z which we had to skip because the
conditions were too rough. The 21Zz sounding lost signal at 160mB (13km), 
will have to recover in post-processing.   After the 0Z launch we'll change
to six hourly soundings.

Erasing during the afternoon with even a few patches of blue skies
although the seas are still rather rough.

Daily Report for March 17

Nice day, calm seas except for a slow swell.  Mainly clear skies, although 
some scattered clouds around the middle of the day.
Light winds, northerlies early, switching round to south-easterlies this
morning.

Wind profiler clearly traced the wind change, winds aloft SW this evening.
Good RASS range with light and tail winds.

Soundings every 6 hours, 3-hourly from 0UT.

Cold front expected during the night with heavy seas.

23:58 - changed profiler settings to widen the aliasing velocity and
increased the number of range gates.

Daily Report for March 16.

Nice sunny day with calm seas and almost no clouds and light winds.

The SeaSoar run finished after midday and so did our 3-hourly soundings.
For the next few days we'll mainly do 6-hourly soundings.
We are steaming south to begin a series of CDTs towards the west.

The wind profiler clear-air reflectivity seems to be correlated with
position in the Gulf Stream as might be expected.  With warmer SST the
boundary top echo in particular becomes very strong.  
Getting very good RASS range with the light and tail winds.

Man over-board drill and demonostration of fares and a rocket propelled
rescue rope.

Tomorrow night we are expecting some weather in the form of a cold front.
It will probably be brief, however may be accompanied with 30 knot winds
and 15 foot waves.

Daily Report for March 15.

Continuing on the SeaSoar run - zig zaging across Gulf Stream boundary
(which is roughly running NW to SE here).

Three-hourly radiosondes.  Note that the 18Z sounding suffered the lost-signal
lock-up issue at about 100mb and a _P.1 file wasn't produced, thus there is no 
plot yet.  The raw data looks okay and so it will be recovered in post-project 
reprocessing.   Had to tune a couple of sondes because of an interferring
signal at 402.7MHz - not the AEGS buoys.

Sunny this morning with a few scattered Cu clouds, and then about 1830 
passed under cloud bank stretching north-south (and off to the east); 
we were headed NE at the time.  Seas a little rocky.
Expecting to run into a cold front Saturday night.

Daily Report for March 14

Fine, northeasterly breeze, calm seas, and a few clouds.

Continuing CDT transect line which should be completed this evening.
Next we will gradually head back to Woods Hole taking measurements
along the way - starting with a 32 hour SeaSoar run beginning overnight.

Soundings every 3-hours.  The last sounding at 21Z was the first with
no jet-stream suggesting a transition to calmer spring weather as the
jet-stream moves further north.

Daily Report for March 13

Fine weather, moderate waves, and northerly breeze.  Partly cloudy.

Started a transect line of CDTs across the Gulf Stream boundary.
We are now doing 3-hourly radiosondes.   So far all have gone well,
except for the 12Z sounding which lost GPS winds after launch.

22:36 - changed profiler parameters back to original settings
(had widened on Sunday for the stormy weather).

Daily Report for March 12.

Half way through the second cruise!

Very heavy seas and rain last night with winds peaking around 24 m/s.
We had to cancel 5 scheduled soundings 21Z, 0Z, 3Z, 6Z, & 9Z.
Finally able to launch at 12Z this morning.

Seas gradually becoming calmer through the day with scattered cloud and
northerly breeze.

SeaSoar had to remain in the water several additional hours, until first
light this morning.  Then they did a CDT (about 12Z) and we launched a sonde,
then sailed east to pick up a drifting buoy (which took a couple of hours to 
find being so small and hard to spot), we did another sonde there, then
a few more hours sailing southeast to another CDT, then plan is to sail further
east to start a transect of CDTs tomorrow.  We are currently on a 6-hourly
sounding schedule.

Daily Report for 11 March

Wind switched to easterlies yesterday and have picked up, with rain from about 
15Z and rough seas.

Still doing the SeaSoar zig zag and soundings every 3 hours - although the 21Z
(and probably the 0Z) sounding was canceled due to heavy seas and waves washing
over the rear deck.

Had a problem with the 12Z sounding this morning - we connected the battery
and no RF signal appeared and then hot steam started coming out of the
battery vent hole!  We replaced it with a fresh battery and that worked fine.

Daily Report for 10 March

Continued sailing east after a pause for 3 CDTs last night (also launched
sondes at each) on route to the next SeaSoar operations. Arrived there
about 21UT (launching a couple more sondes on the way).  Plan to do
3-hourly sondes for the next couple of days while the SeaSoar is operating.

Seas very calm, light winds and sunny for most of the day.
The captain said this is just how the brochures said it would be!

Opened up the profiler enclosure to check on the stabilized platform,
everythings seems to be okay, although the gyro motors seems a little
loud - hopefully it doesn't mean the bearings are wearing out.

Daily Report for March 9

Last night the SeaSoar zig zag continued, with sondes being launched every 2 - 4
hours.   On one of the legs early this morning, however, seas were rough 
with waves coming over the aft deck, so we cancelled a couple of sondes.

Resumed soundings as SeaSoar finished (13UT) and we got into a better 
orientation with respect to wind and waves.  Seas also calmed down.

Currently in transit eastwards to a CDT transect.  CDTs due to start 0UT.

A little light snow early, then partly cloudy with occasional sun.

Daily Report for March 8.

We started doing a zig-zag pattern, towing the sea-soar back and fore across 
the GulF Stream boundary.  Lauching radiosondes every 2 - 3 hours.  
Some soundings are showing a double inversions - may be due to air warmed
by a loop of the Gulf Stream to the west being advected overhead.

Profiler is working okay - we had some snow last night. Occasional light RFI.  
Mainly cloudy although the sun shone thru breifly at times.
Seas a rather choppy today with a strong westerly breeze.

Daily Report for 7 March.

Sailing back south from Woods Hole to Gulf Stream area after a successful
crewman transfer last night.  Now we are sailing with the wind and waves,
it is a little smoother that yesterday's rough ride.  
ETA back in the study area is early tomorrow morning.

Lots of ice built up on deck so we aren't allowed to do soundings yet.

Profiler ingest process on data manager stalled (ascii consensus files are
being rsync'ed across okay, just not ingested into netcdf etc).
mstatus shows "is" ingest process still running, just not producing anything.
Restarted process using commands "ingest stop" then "ingest start".

Otherwise everything running okay - getting good RASS range sailing with the 
wind - often to 800m or more, as compared with 300m yesterday against the wind.  
Sudden deepening of echoes from 18Z as we run into the cold northern air 
and Bermuda high boundary.  Increasing cloud and a little fog.

Soundings scheduled to start at 5am local (9UT) tomorrow morning at
4 hourly intervals to 17UT as we cruise down wind along a sea soar line,
then 2 hourly as we head back up wind. 

Daily Report for March 6

Steaming north from study area up to Woods Hole area to exchange injured
crew-member.   Sailing into the wind and waves giving a rough ride in.
There are also cold temperatures (-5C and below) so ice is building up on deck,
and we have not been allowed out to make soundings (last sounding was at 0Z).

Late tonight we should be steaming back south (fortunately with the wind and 
waves).  A cold-air outbreak event is predicted for Thursday and Friday,
then we should have warmer calmer conditions.

Profiler seems to be working well, although the winds seem a little low compared
to ship's surface winds.  RASS only seeing 2 or 3 gates into the wind.

Daily Report 5 March

Sailed back south to core of Gulf Stream, dropped an APEX buoy 
(and did a sounding), then headed back north.  
Doing more soundings on transect across the Stream before heading north
(and switching to sypnotic 12 hourly sounding schedule).

We are headed into harbor to replace an injured crew member.

Sea's rougher today, partly cloudy
 

Daily Report for 4 March

Seas calmer today - was rough yesterday as we went thru a squall line.
Sunny this morning, clouds increasing during afternoon.

The ship is currently going along a transect line dropping CDT sensors.
Launched radiosondes (see separate sounding log).

Crossed over northern edge of Gulf Stream boundary abou 18Z.
RASS contour plot shows a noticeable temperature drop around then.

Data manager stopped generating profiler plots for a few hours - the
consensus (and spectral) files were making it over to DM but they weren't
being converted to netCDF.  Tried stopping and restarting iss display,
but in the end had to reboot DM to get it working (about 18:20UT).
The missing consensus file and plots were then recovered.

Restarted POP a few minutes later to get serial line restarted,
missed about an hour & half of moments data (can recover equivalent data
from spc and nima data later).

The ISS system was shutdown today at approx 00:30z. At request of ship. Something to do with being within Bermuda territorial waters.

It's snowing in the Atlantic!  Good returns from the profiler, up to 2.5 km
it looks like.

The surface winds have consistently been 250 degrees and 10 m/s for the last
few hours, according to the ship's met data.  That doesn't seem too
far off from the profiler, which is showing 5-10 m/s in the lowest
several gates.

CLIMODE set-up finished.

The main issue was with the profiler.  About 16Z the signal suddenly weakened.
Looked ok on the scope, but the plots on the computer showed very weak signal.
Eventually replaced the TX/RX and Interface boxes plus the connecting cables.
Now using ISS3 boxes.
Seemed to be working okay from about 20Z.

Did a couple of RASS runs.

Lots of RFI and clutter as usual.

Did test sounding at 1530Z - okay except that lost GPS winds at launch.

Still cold and windy (very cold with the wind chill).

Gary arrived as set up ship data and ingesting etc.

Bill, Chris, Ned, Tim, and Laura are leaving in the morning.

The ship will sail about 9am in the morning with Lou and Gary,
Bon Voiage!

CLIMODE Setup

ISS2 setup on the R/V Knorr for the CLIMODE project.

Wind profiler set on the upper rear deck with a stablized platform.
The system is orientated such that the X25 beam is pointed 45 degrees
forward off the port side.

The GAUS sounding system is set-up in the rear lab on the main deck
so that balloons can be filled in the hanger.

Set-up crew : Lou, Bill, Ned, Tim, Laura, and Chris

The first operations crew will be Lou and Gary.