Within the next 3 days or so, we plan on having Silbo nearly on top of the Mid Atlantic Ridge:
In the figure above, the black bathymetric lines indicate the depth at which we are starting to get close to Silbo’s bottom inflection depth (the point at which the glider switches from diving to climbing). Currently we have the way point resting on the southern edge of what looks to be a fairly safe are to cross – nearly no areas that reach high enough to put the glider in any danger of striking the sea floor. To try and increase our chances of making it into this ‘safe zone’ we proposed to move the way point further to the north east so the glider can cut at an angle across the eastward current as we make our approach.
Looking to the models, all 4 representations are agreeing quite well, all showing the signature of a large warm eddy lying to the east of Silbo’s position. If there prove to be true, the new way point should have no issues allowing the glider to move to the north east and make its way across the Mid Atlantic Ridge and further on towards Europe.
HYCOM Forecast 8/19/2016
OSCAR Current pastcast 8/17/2016
RTOFS Forecast 8/19/2016
Copernicus Forecast 8/19/2016
Force Wind Sea & Honor