Hey All!

Well Silbo is continuing on his way and now making much better progress!  Since receiving a new way point yesterday morning, Silbo has flown roughly 25 km, compared to the ~50 he flew thursday-monday.

To compliment the decision our team made when deciding on the new way point, our friend Daniel Hernández, Josep Isern, Enrique Fernández and the rest of the team from ROC-SIANI group at ULPGC provided us with a simulation that made an estimation on the progress Silbo can make with the new way point compared to the old one using a 3 day estimation of marine conditions based off of the hycom model.

This path planning simulation shows Silbo flying an average of 18 km/day with the new way point compared to 8 km/day with the old flying into the head current.

With the hope of the new way point working as well as the simulation predicts, we hope to now ‘surf’ the large cold core sun eddy to the south around and to the east and use the smaller warm core planet eddies to head east towards Madeira.

Silbo’s projected path through the solar system of eddies to the south

The path highlighted in the image above provides silbo with a well beaten trail of currents that lands him pretty close to the western shores of Madeira where our friends at PLOCAN hope to deploy some drifters along with conducting an inspection of the glider and providing any support that may be needed.  Given that Silbo can maintain the speed estimated in the simulation of 18km/day, he would reach that point in roughly 6 weeks.

Unfortunately this would only hold true if these conditions remained the same.  The ocean is one of the most rapidly changing environments on the planet and so silbo will need to keep up a good pace while the teams in the Canary Islands,   TWR, and here at Rutgers continue to keep an eye on the most advantageous way points and flight patterns to make sure we stay in the best currents.  Since March 8th when Silbo was deployed, the large warm core eddy that we are on the outer edge of has migrated about 55 km to the south east.

Unfortunately, I do not have as accurate of a reference point as with this eddy as it started out with its center near Santa Maria for others, but they have noticeably moved as well.  An example being the warm core eddy planet south of the cold sun has been edging further north.  Seeing this, we must do our best to watch how these eddies are moving and try and aim silbo not only with how the currents are being shown, but with some insight on how they may shift in the near future.

Nilsen & Antonio