Tag: Nilsen Strandskov (Page 5 of 11)

Hey All,

Here are the pics from the deployment!

Silbo and the APEX float that was deployed. photo credit: Ben Allsup, Teledyne Webb Research

Chris DeCollibus of TWR and Silbo on the dock before deployment. photo credit: Ben Allsup, Teledyne Webb Research

Test Dive photo credit: Ben Allsup, Teledyne Webb Research

The Bear is About! photo credit: Ben Allsup, Teledyne Webb Research

If there is one important lesson we have learned through the years, it is that the more resources the better.  So now with the beginning of the new leg of this mission, we have a number of products we will be using to get Silbo to his destination and for future gliders involved with the Challenger Mission.  First off, we will continue using the NLOM/NCOM/MODIS data provided to us by ULPGC.  NOAA is providing us with access to their new operational global HyCOM forecast system.  Thanks to Antonio, GEOEYE and Seawifs will provide us with some new products that will prove to be a huge help while we are out in the open waters, however when we eventually move east of the 20˚W meridian, we will be in range of Spain’s ROM data which will give us very high definition imagery and data.  Finally, also supplied by Antonio, we will have a forecasting system that will give us not only real time data, but predictions up to 96 hours into the future!  Seeing how much our friends from across the ocean provide, it is hard to imagine how we could pull off missions of this magnitude without international collaborations- something that will be key for the future when we take the challenger gliders around the world.

Bathymetry contour map of the sea floor between the Azores and Madeira

The image above shows another map of the bathymetry which compliments the maps I have posted in the past showing that although there are regions of protruding rock from the sea floor, there are no land marks that come close to 1000m from the surface.

The following four images are from the HYCOM model showing currents overlayed on Density, Salinity, Temperature, and Sea Surface Height.  All layers show the eddy solar system discussed earlier that Silbo is currently battling.

HYCOM Sea Surface Density & Currents

HYCOM Sea Surface Salinity & Currents

HYCOM Sea Surface Temperature & Currents

HYCOM Sea Surface Height & Currents

The next image is of the NLOM/NCOM data which show a similar pattern as the HYCOM of the eddie system.

NLOM Sea Surface Height overlay with NCOM Sea Surface Currents

Finally, I will leave everyone with the time series profiles that are being freshly compiled as Silbo makes his way from the Azores to the Canaries.  The following are two links from John Kerfoot (our data architect) where the scientific imagery and engineering diagnostic data can be found

Density recorded by Silbo

Salinity recorded by Silbo

Temperature recorded by Silbo

Sound Velocity through water recorded by Silbo

Again a special thanks to Ben Allsup and Chris DeCollibus for their hard work on prepping Silbo, getting him back in the water and getting such excellent pictures!

Force, Wind, Sea & Honor to all!

Nilsen Strandskov & Antonio Ramos

Hey All!

Well it is official: Silbo is back in the water and on his way to the Canaries!  Ben and Chris departed from Ponta Delgada last night and spent roughly 26 hours on the boat sailing out to the deployment location where they put Silbo and a buoy into the water

Now we will resume our posts guiding this glider to its home in the Canaries over the next few months.  There is about 1400 km between Silbo and our target which we estimate will take us until about mid may as our projected recovery date.

Looking at the bathymetry, it seems like we are in the clear.  From our current location on there doesn’t appear to be any dangerous land scape.  This means we should have no problem with running aground or wasting battery by running the altimeter.

It also looks like Silbo has his work cut out for him already.  Both HYCOM and the NLOM/NCOM models are showing not the most favorable currents, and the return of the solar system eddies.

HYCOM model of Sea Surface Height and Surface Currents

NLOM model of Sea Surface Height and NCOM model of Currents

It seems Silbo is between the bottom of a warm core eddy (clockwise spin) and the top of a cold core eddy (counterclockwise spin) resulting in a strong push to the northwest.   Depending on how this eddy system evolves we may need to make a decision on whether we set the way point to fight these currents or to allow ourselves to ride the eddy south and around the west side of the cold core eddy.  But we will discuss this tomorrow and I will put up another update.

Tomorrow will also bring a number of pictures from the deployment by Ben and Chris.

Force Wind Sea & Honor and welcome back Silbo!

Nilsen & Antonio

Hey all,

This past weekend brought us some beautiful weather, but even more amazing news.  Ben Allsup and Chris DeCollibus from Teledyne Webb Research have arrived in Ponta Delgada where they began their hard work to prepare Silbo for the next stretch of the mission.

Silbo with his new extended battery bay. Photo from Chris DeCollibus

For this next leg, Silbo has been modified to a stretch deep glider, meaning a second battery bay has been added to buy us extra time in the water on our way from the port of Ponta Delgada to the beaches of the Canary Islands.  Over the past couple days, silbo has gone through a number of tests to make sure he is ready to tackle the remaining ~1350 km of this mission.  While our team now in the Azores has been working on that, we have begun looking at the conditions for the deployment.

So far, we have two options for deployment: dropping silbo off along his track from last december or sailing east of Sao Miguel and heading south from there.  The meteorological and marine forecast and boat availability will dictate which location we choose to deploy from.

Antonio gave us a detailed marine and atmospheric forecast highlighting windows for deployment.  Our main window we plan to shoot for is between tomorrow, Tuesday 6th to Sunday 11th, where Antonio pointed out a long stretch of calm seas and nice weather with the most ideal conditions being on Friday 9th.

Next we looked at the bathymetry of the region to see where it will be deep enough to fly most efficiently.

In the bathymetry maps above, the blue color represents depths that are >1000m which allows Silbo to fly freely without us needing to turn on the altimeter, saving us battery.

If we can sail outside of the red circle prior to deployment, we should be able to fly to the full 1000m depth with no problem bathymetry wise.  Next we look at currents from the hycom and ncom models.

Hycom Sea Surface Height & Currents

NCOM Currents from 3/3

NCOM Currents from 3/4

Both models above show a pretty strong current that wraps through the islands causing a cyclonic current around Santa Maria(Island to the south, center of the yellow eddy in the Hycom image).  It looks like if we were to go the south east route, we would have to go pretty far out in order to avoid being pushed back into the archipelago.  However if we go out to the east from Sao Miguel, we can ride this current to the east and then south around the warm eddy seen in the hycom picture.  Evidence of this pattern is also seen in the currents & salinity google earth movies that Antonio sent out last month that showed a day by day evolution of the conditions from Jan 3 through Jan 28.

Finally, we have been keeping an eye on the ship traffic around the islands to make sure we don’t deploy silbo in the middle of a heavily traffic shipping lane.  Our main tool for doing so is the AIS (Automatic Identification System) data provided by Localiza Todo which provides us with near real time images of what ships are where in the ocean with forecasts of where the ships will be over the next hour.

The red circle is Ponta Delgada and we’re roughly 1,400km from the blue skies and sandy beaches of the Canary Islands; yet as you can see, the road won’t be easy. Although we’re still a ways away from our destination, countless ships are in our way; but as we get closer, we’ll determine how to slip past them.

Zooming in on the Azores, Sunday afternoon was pretty slow with very little movement to the south east of Sao Miguel.

Ship Traffic Afternoon of March 4

However, this morning the area is looking much more lively so we may want to sail a bit further out of the way to make sure Silbo doesn’t experience any close encounters that could potentially end the mission all together.

Ship Traffic Morning of March 5

Given this information, we will continue discussing what we want to do and will soon make a decision on where and when we will deploy.  We will leave you with a truly inspirational photo taken by Ben Allsup of Silbo during one of his tests.

Check back soon for more updates

Force Wind Sea & Honor

Nilsen, Antonio & Oliver

Hey All!

So we are now preparing once again to get Silbo back in the water and on his way home.  It has been 66 days since the emergency operation that involved recovering Silbo under cover of darkness after a sever drop in voltage, but now we have a team soon departing for the Azores to get him back on his feet.

For this next leg of the mission, running from the Azores to the Canaries (just over 1,300 km), Silbo will be modified as a stretch glider with Alkaline battery packs.  A stretch glider has two battery bays to allow the glider to hold more batteries and spend more time at sea.  Ru 27, the glider that flew successfully across the Atlantic from NJ to Spain back in 2009 had a similar set up.

For now, the plan is that the new battery bay and battery packs will be sent out this week and a team from Teledyne Webb will soon follow.  The deployment should take place towards the end of the month.

The remaining ~1300km should take Silbo from the end of February until about Mid May where he will be received with a warm welcome at his home in the Canary Islands.

Looking at the Bathymetry plot above, we should not have too many obstacles on the trip from the Azores to the Canaries.  The coloration is all the deep blue (everywhere except where the islands rise from the sea floor) is 1000+ m depth.  Silbo’s max depth he can handle is about 1000m, so far averaging about 980m per dive, so we should not have to worry about using too much battery on the altimeter.

We also have a newly updated tool that will definitely prove its helpfulness.  Last week, Antonio introduced us to a new product that he made over at ULPGC.  It is a set of movies to be viewed in google earth that shows the progression of salinity and currents over the month of January.

With this updating, we will be able to see what the ocean has been doing to try and make the best estimation of what it will do in the near future.  But soon, we won’t even have to make predictions.  As we near the range of Spain’s ROM data, we will have the potential to make accurate predictions at up to +96 hrs.  This will definitely prove to be helpful in piloting Silbo.

Antonio and his team has also made an incredible discovery from this new feature:  Mediterranean eddies forming between 600-1200m.

These Mediterranean Eddies are a product of the super salty water of the Mediterranean Sea spilling out into the North Atlantic where it sinks due to the difference in density.  These solar system groups of eddies are causing currents up to .2m/s at depth which we can use to aid in helping Silbo along.  Keeping an eye on these ‘meddies’ will be key in piloting and will give us some amazing data.

In the time Silbo has been out of the water, we have also begun to analyze the data collected thus far.  One plot originally created by our friends Ruben Marrero and Alberto Gonzalez from PLOCAN shows the first visualization of Heat Transport from the data collected by a Slocum Glider.

This plot starting at the point nearest the viewer shows data from Iceland to the far edge of the plot where Silbo is about even with Ireland.  In relation to the viewer, up and down measures the heat transport of the North Atlantic in relation to the glider measured in Jouls * meters/second.  The data set used to create this plot however is incomplete and hopefully soon I will be able to produce a plot with data covering the nearly 4000km from deployment to recovery in December 2011.

I also led a group of students ( Jess Castoro, Chris Puskas, Eva Pena, Holly Broadus) last semester as we looked at the temperature and salinity data recorded from Silbo and compared to data collected from the Argos drifters scattered throughout the world’s ocean.  Our goal was to see if the change in conditions (temperature & salinity) that we saw on the journey from the arctic waters off of Iceland to the more temperate waters of the Azores were due regional or temporal differences. (click on the two images below to see the temperature and salinity data respectively)

What we concluded after looking at the different plots we created was that the temperature change off of Iceland was minimal while the change near Silbo’s position on October 3rd was much larger.  This lead to the conclusion that the temperature difference seen between the end of June and beginning of October was both regional and temporal.  On the other hand, we believe the differences seen in the salinity could be due to high fresh water flux in Iceland compared to influences of the Mediterranean on our position in October.

Finally, last week Ralph Rayner, Chair of the Oceanology International meeting in London visited the COOL room where we was given a tour of our top of the line facility and discussed the Challenger Mission with Scott

That is all for now.  Check back over the next couple weeks as we finalize the preparations of Silbo as we send him back on his way home!

Force Wind Sea & Honor!

Nilsen & Antonio

Hey all,

After 164 days at sea, covering a total of 3,940 km, Silbo is now safely on board ship on his way back to shore in the Azores.

In the middle of last week, Silbo aborted due to a low voltage reading in his batteries, meaning that we did not have much time left on this mission.  Our team sprung into action and we were able to get out to the Azores in just a few days.  We then lucked out with a nice window of clear skies for this past weekend that allowed for us to plan to leave port.

On Saturday, as the team prepared to leave, the ship that was to take our team out on the recovery mission suffered some mechanical failures resulting in the need to find a new vessel.  Soon after, the team boarded the Shanghai and left port.  Then at 23:47 GMT (6:47pm local), “undercover of darkness,” Silbo was pulled from the water where they are now on their way back to Ponta Delgada where Silbo will take a long deserved rest.  In the meantime, new battery packs will be shipped to the Azores and after a few weeks rest Silbo will be back on his way continuing the legendary Challenger Mission.

Force Wind Sea & Honor

Ben Allsup, Lauren Cooney, Antonio Ramos & Nilsen Strandskov

Hey Guys,

sorry for the lack of updates, but it has been a very hectic week.  We have sent a team out to the Azores where in a few hours they will leave port to recover Silbo.  He has now been drifting on the surface for a few days now so we have been keeping an eye on the shipping traffic to and from the Azores in hope that no one would get too close.  We’ve been lucky so far and we only have a few more hours to go.  So everyone keep your fingers crossed and we hope to have good news tomorrow with a further update.

Force and Honor to all!

Lauren, Antonio & Nilsen

Hey All,

So it seems another obstacle has tripped up Silbo on his journey.  Earlier today he aborted his mission due to a low voltage reading on his battery of ~9.3V and has now been limping for the past few hours

For the past few hours, our team at TWR has been working frivolously trying to diagnose the problem and figure out what we shall dow from here.

Lauren Cooney, Antonio Ramos & Nilsen Strandskov

Hey all,

Since he has been sent on his way, Silbo has been making excellent progress as he sails towards the end of the first leg of the Challenger Mission.  Over the weekend, he broke new ground as he is now less than 1000km from the finish line!  As the crow flies, he is 950 km from the gorgeous shores of the Canary Islands.

Figure 1. Estimated Remaining Distance for the first leg of the Challenger Mission

Looking into the bathymetry of this region of the Atlantic, Silbo is now seemingly free of any dangerous terrain which will allow us to continually fly deep and therefore conserving energy.

Figure 2. Bathymetry from Azores to Canaries

Energy conservation will be crucial over the upcoming weeks.  After the very energy consuming leaks and recovery opperations we have a few weeks ago, we have done an energy consumption analysis (courteous of Ruben’s plot below).  It looks like we have enough power to last us until the first week of February.  This is slightly concerning because if we are able to maintain an average velocity of 1km/hr, that leaves us with between 50-60 days from the Canaries with a recovery date around January 20th.  So if everything works out in our favor, we could make it.  But if we have learned one thing working on long duration glider missions is that we must be prepared for the unthinkable because anything can happen.

Figure 3. Esitmate end date of the mission based off of remaining battery life by Ruben Marrero

So we have two options: cross our fingers and hope that through precise path planning we can push our way through to the Canaries, or we stop at the Island of Madeira (Portugal) where our friends at PLOCAN have a planned mooring deployment and facilities where Silbo can get checked out and new re-batteried.

Figure 4. Sea Surface Height and Surface Currents (ULPGC)

Looking at Figures 4 & 5 of two different plots of Sea Surface Height and Surface Currents, we see that we are in the midst of a cold core eddy (counter clockwise rotation).

Figure 5. Sea Surface Height and Surface Currents

However, looking at Figures 6, 7, 8and 9, there actually appears to be a staircase in the currents that goes from our most recent location to both Madeira and The Canaries.

Figure 6. Stairway like path to Madeira and The Canaries

Figure 7. Currents and North South components for Surface waters and at 200m

If we inspect at depth, we can see that a similar pattern can be found in the currents reaching to 1000m below the surface.

Figure 8. Currents and North South Components for 400m and 600m

Figure 9. Currents and North South Components for 800m and 1000m

If we continue to find a similar path over the next two months, this staircase may be very useful in reaching our destination.

Figure 10. Sea Surface Temperature satellite imagery from ULPGC for 11/28/11

Looking at the Sea Surface Temperature in Figure 10, we are now about half way through the band of blue and almost to the warmer waters, designated in green, where we will be for the last few hundred kilometers of the mission a we close in on the Canaries.  It will be interesting to see what the biological growth will be like as Silbo passes through the green and when he continues his journey past the Canaries in the tropical waters of the North Atlantic.

Figure 11. Salinity at depths of 600m, 700m, 800m, and 900m

Finally, Antonio pointed out that we are now pretty deep into the ‘tongue’ of the salty Mediterranean waters.  As we can see in Figure 11, starting at about 600m subsurface, we start to encounter some very salty water.  As we get closer to the West coast of Europe we see that the levels increase even further which may lead to a strong halocline between 700-1000m.

Hope everyone enjoyed their Holiday!

Force, Wind, Sea & Honor!

Lauren Cooney, Antonio Ramos, Oliver Ho, Lindsay Howell & Nilsen Strandskov

Hey all,

As everyone is preparing for a day full of turkey, stuffing, football, and a nice well deserved nap, silbo is continuing on his way from the Azores towards his home in the Canary Islands. Having been launched only 5 months ago (even though it seems like it has been an eternity) this little glider has flown over 3,600km and is finally on the home stretch towards completing the first part of this mission to go around the globe.

Since the kinks have been all worked out after last week, Silbo is now making pretty good progress as he makes his way over the last of the treacherous terrain back into the open ocean.

As we move further away from the shielding of the islands, we are now exposed to the elements more.  As we can see from the above picture of the sea surface height and currents, we can see a number of eddies in the area, the red spinning in a clockwise manner and the blue turning counter to that.  As we get closer, we will analyze what the currents are like past these eddies as we make a decision on where to put the way point.

And as always the sea surface temperature looks fascinating as we can see the temperature bands going from warm to cold towards the poles.  As we get closer to the Canaries, we will see the temperature continue to rise as we enter the bands of green and yellow when we enter the more tropical waters near the Canaries.  It will be interesting to see how deep the warm water goes and if this will effect the lack of biological growth we have seen thus far on silbo’s hull.

Finally, there has been a lot of talk lately on where we go from the Canaries after we have reached there.  As our mission is to take silbo and the new Rutgers glider around the world, we have quite a few options of where to go.

There are a number of historical tracks we can follow, from Columbus to Elcano to making up our own path as we travel the globe. Currently a path zigzagging the atlantic and circling the antartic (shown above) along with a number of other paths are currently being discussed.  But more on that later.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone

Lauren Conney, Antonio Ramos, and Nilsen Strandskov

Hey all,

First off, I would just like to announce to everyone that Rutgers has officially purchased the second long duration glider for the purpose of carrying out the Challenger Mission!  Because of this, I would like to let everyone know that we will now refer to the glider running the first leg of the Challenger Mission by its original name of Silbo, a name full of honor and history (opposed to the name we had christened it back in late June) here on the blog. This glider has fought long and hard to complete this epic journey and he is now one step closer from reaching the end of the first leg.

So where we left off last, Silbo had run into more complications and had to be pulled out of the water for a second time.  After being deployed following the repair to the aft section, the pitch battery had been disconnected leading to a sporadic flight pattern that would be detrimental to our little glider.  However, after some an amazing continual effort by Chris DeCollibus and Rayco Moran, Silbo was recovered, fixed and sent back on his way.

After running a number of test dives to confirm he is back to 100%, we have now sent him back on his way.  Tomorrow we will update on the conditions and ‘shooting the gap’ as we take proactive measures to navigate some potentially dangerous bathymetry.

Thank you again to our amazing team! Force Wind Sea & Honor

Lauren Cooney, Ben Allsup, Antonio Ramos & Nilsen Strandskov