OWS Polarfront Cruise P162, 09 SEP – 04 OCT 2006. HiWASE mobilisation and shakedown cruise

Abstract

This report describes the mobilisation and shakedown cruise of the Norwegian weather ship OWS Polarfront in September 2006. The air-sea turbulent flux system "AutoFlux", a commercial wave measurement system "WAVEX" and a number of digital cameras were installed on the ship as part of the UK-SOLAS project "HiWASE" (High Wind Air-Sea Exchanges). These complemented the ship's mean meteorological sensors and a ship-borne wave recorder (SBWR) both run by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute (DNMI) and an underway pCO₂ system run by the Bergen Centre for Climate Research (BCCR).
The Polarfront and its predecessors have occupied Station M (66º N, 2º E) for over 60 years.
The ship is on station all year round, only leaving for an eight hour port call once every 4 weeks, and an annual refit for 5 days in September. The HiWASE instrumentation was installed in early September 2006, prior to the shakedown cruise P162. The various systems operated continuously from September 2006 until December 2009, when DNMI withdrew the ship from operation.
This cruise report describes the instrumentation installed on the ship, including that run by DNMI and BCCR as well as the HiWASE systems, and presents an initial analysis of the data quality from the various systems. Preliminary results are given for the air-sea fluxes of momentum, CO₂ and sensible and latent heat. These fluxes were directly measured using the inertial dissipation and/or the eddy correlation (covariance) methods, from a suite of fast response sensors installed on the ship's foremast.
This report focuses on the systems as installed for the shakedown cruise. However, over the 3 year deployment period various changes were made: these are described in a separate metadata report (Moat et al., 2010).

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