Hey All!

Challenger weaving its way through the eddy solar system

As Challenger 1 continues to work its way south along the eastern side of the second large warm eddy of the solar system and battle its way through our 22nd storm, we continue to make good progress as we are now half way to the Azores!!!  The two images above are of Sea Surface Height showing our path along the eastern side of a large eddy.  Keeping this pace, we could reach the Azores by the 2nd week in October and so if Challenger has begun feeling any effects from biological growth, we will be able to provide aid.

Storm # 22

These storms however are intensifying as we get later in the year.  As the summer months warm the North Atlantic, the strong storms we see along the Eastern Sea Board of the U.S. gain strength as they then are carried by the Jet Stream right to us!

Speaking of the warming seas, lets look at an interesting point in the temperature data from the North Atlantic.

Sea Surface Temperatur Map (Top) and Temperatures at a depth of 300m

The first image is surface temperatures while the second image is of temperature at depths of 300m.  The second image shows how deep the effects of some of the larger eddies can be seen.

Similarly, looking at the temperature profiles from Challenger since deployment, we can see the thermocline grow deeper as we passed through the wall of warm core eddies along our journey.

Finally, we see something very interesting looking at the sea surface salinity maps of the North Atlantic.  Below, we can see that we are on just the outer edge of the northern arm of the Gulf Stream.  We predict, that once we cross into the 40’s latitudes and past the edge of the Gulf Stream, we will find even stronger currents that will aid us further on our way to greatness!

Salinity Map of the North Atlantic showing the branches of the Gulf Stream

Stay tuned for more updates soon!

Nilsen & Antonio

Hey All!

So Challenger 1 has made considerable progress within the past few days. Since Friday, Challenger 1 has flown roughly 122km/75 miles, breaking our speed record yet again hitting 0.63 m/s!!

We harnessed the power of the clockwise flow of the Eastern-side of the eddys and are cruising. For the next few days the currents seem favorable, quickly heading in the East – Southeast direction, ever closer to our waypoint.

Today, Antonio have us a few new products that will likely help us even more on our travels.

First he gave us a new Sea Surface Height map takes the european geoid (mean surface height), and calculates the isopotential surface position and from there highlights and predicts surface anomalies.

This will give us another perspective on where the warm and cold eddies are and predicted to go to better our forecast and piloting judgements.

Next we have a new current map that shows the intensity of the vertical attribute of the currents.  So on the map below, the darker red the area, the stronger the currents are moving north, while darker blue means a southerly movement.

As the maps above show, we are still in the reaches of the strong warm eddy we had first encountered late last week that threatened to pull us back out west, but we should officially be out of its reach over the next day or so and continue on our way south.

Also with how well these warm eddies are lined up, we hope to not have to change the way point for a while as we plan to just surf the currents from the east side of one warm eddy to the next until we are out of this solar system.

We will keep everyone updated!

Nilsen , Antonio, and Oliver

Hey All!

Well Challenger continues to plunge its way through the intersection of currents that lie in our area due to the overwhelming amount of eddies.  Last night we changed the way point further south as to prevent us from being pulled too far east by the warm core eddy next to us.  The changed way point successfully steered us out of its pull to the north, but for the time being we are sailing in a bit of a head current until we can break free from its control.

Even though we have lost some speed, we are predicting that we may break even our most recent high speed record of 0.57 m/s over the next couple days as the strongest southerly current we have seen to date lies only a short distance to our south.  This will launch us at high speeds southward along the eastern side of three warm core eddies before we may change direction and try and aim for the western side of a cold eddy to weave ourselves back around.  But that decision will be made for certain in the future.

Aside from our success with last nights change of way point, we have some really beautiful imagery from both our HYCOM and ULPGC models that all seem to match up fairly well (not always the case but really leaves us with a good feeling about what our plan is for the time being).

Sea Surface Height with Currents from the HYCOM model

Sea Surface Height with Currents from ULPGC model

Although the scales are different for the color on the two sea surface height images above, the correlation of the currents are the same showing the strong southerly flow.

Sea Surface Temperature with Currents from HYCOM model

Satellite Sea Surface Temperature with Current model from ULPGC

Unfortunately due to cloud cover courtesy of the storm number 20, there isn’t any temperature data for the imagery, same with chlorophyll a below.

Satellite Imagery of Chl a with Current model from ULPGC

Sea Surface Salinity with Currents from HYCOM model

As described in our post from a few days ago, when on the east side of a warm eddy, salinity, temperature and currents all tend to match up.

Sea Surface Density and Currents from HYCOM model

We will keep everyone updated over the next couple of days.  Have a great weekend everyone!

Nilsen & Oliver

Hey All,

Well Challenger is now being pummeled with his 20th storm in the 49 days since being deployed way back on June 23.

As you can see from the figure above, the presence of a strong system in the jet stream coincides with some wave activity reaching 8 ft swells, and a cloud system all in the vicinity of Challenger 1.

This storm however has not been able to slow us down as we have now had 7 consecutive segments all above 0.52 m/s!

Although it also seems that the currents are changing as we continue on our way to the south east so these speeds may not be around much longer.  As it says in the figure below, we are beginning to feel the effects of the currents moving to the north from the west side of the warm eddy to our east.  Depicted by the three lines, we can see that we have been leveling off and turning to the east because of this influence.

So we proposed a new way point of 49N 23 W to try and steer ourselves away from the eddy to our east’s influence and to try and continue to surf the eddy to our south.

If we continue on our current path, we will be dragged into this North East flow

Zooming out, we can see the next two solar systems that we will be navigating over the next two weeks.

Hopefully moving the way point to our south will be enough to put us on the right path to follow the yellow arrows down the stream of warm planets to the next system.  The new way point will be set at the next surfacing in a couple of hours, so hopefully it won’t be too late to try and change our course to catch the more southerly currents.  Tomorrow we will make sure to give everyone an update on how Challenger flying.

Nilsen, Antonio, and Oliver

‘Afternoon everyone,

Yesterday was a big day for us here at IMCS, we were honored with a visit from the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction, Dr. Kathy Sullivan and Director of the Integrated Oceans Observing System (IOOS) Dr. Zdenka Willis, along with a number of other high ranking government officials.  After a tour and discussion of the glider lab, COOL room, and the Challenger Mission (which consisted of a skype call with our partners at PLOCAN), everyone proceeded to the Alampi Room.  There, various awards were given out for Rutgers appreciation and collaboration and Dr. Sullivan even presented us with an award for the success of the Atlantic Crossing and luck on the completion of the Challenger Mission.

Scott Glenn, Zdenka Willis and Kathryn Sullivan touring the COOL room

Our friends at PLOCAN (including past students of the COOL room, Dara, Adri and Alvaro)during a skype session while our visitors were here.

But back to Challenger 1.  There has been a lot that has happened piloting wise over the past two weeks so first we would just like to do a quick re-cap.

Jumping back a bit, we were entering a new solar system, which we carved a path straight through the middle where we snaked back and forth jumping from one eddy to the next.

Moving on from there, we found a strong warm core eddy, the “warm planet” that really slowed our progress as we were dragged nearly directly to the west as we were pulled into it’s strong clockwise gyre.

This was then followed by our encounter with a “Mystery Eddy” on Sunday that again caught us off guard with its strength, reminding us that the ocean is a formidable foe that is still widely unknown and which should not be underestimated.

These were all very good learning experiences that will aid us on the remaining 75% of our journey.  Antonio pointed out after we were liberated from the allure of the mystery eddy, that when we cross the west side of a cold eddy (general counter clockwise), it seems that the currents we observed (as we crossed the past two solar systems) is going to the North- North/West direction, flowing in the same direction as the thermohaline pattern, but do not completely follow what the models say the currents should be.  However, when we fly on the eastern side of a warm eddy,  the currents agree with what the models predict, going East-South/East (clockwise motion) and thus opposite of the North-North/West thermohaline flow we see in this region.  The result of both of the counter currents we see is to the south, which are the currents we must ride until we find more favorable currents. This explains the trouble we were having when it came to flying to the west side of a cold eddy and our experience with the mystery eddy.

The North Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation showing the N-NW flow in our area that we have dealt with recently

So what we have to look for now, is to aim for the eastern side of the warm eddies, where we have found much better luck propulsion wise versus catching the western side of a cold eddy.  This however we think will change when we reach the Canary current, where we should find better luck on the western edge of a cold eddy.

After this break through, Monday we saw some strong currents to our south east that we thought may be ideal so we began looking into the changing of the way point for Challenger 1.

Our two options for waypoints. Yellow would be the range we followed keeping the waypoint, Green if we changed it

After much discussion, Antonio and I decided we should move our way point further east and aim for the stronger currents we saw to the south east of our position.  Below we can see the strong currents turning from east to south/east as it curves around the large red-yellow swirl to our south.

With this way point move, Challenger went from being a glider to a rocket ship as we broke our previous speed record not once, or twice, but on our past 4 segments!

The first two segments that broke our speed record

Previously, we were holding a record of 0.47 m/s, but on our past 4 surfacings, we blasted that away going 0.52m/s on the first two segments and the most recent two at 0.53 m/s!

Now we look to the near future to see when the next plan of action shall take place.  As the conditions are now, when Challenger gets to the vicinity of the circle drawn on the map above, we will move the way point back to the south to  try and take the most advantage of favorable currents.

As always, force, wind, sea and honor

Nilsen Strandskov, Antonio Ramos, and Oliver Ho

Good morning all!

Just a quick update on the Challenger mission

So last night after Antonio and I conversed and changed the way point, Challenger came close to breaking its speed record for the mission by hitting 1.52 km/hr (0.42m/s)!  What contributed to this speed, was we moved the way point further east, allowing us to catch the outer edge of the east side of the warm eddy to our south.  This launched us on a south east trajectory following these new currents shown below.

That’s all for now, we will have another post later today

Nilsen