Oceanography The Official Magazine of
The Oceanography Society
Volume 30 Issue 02

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Volume 30, No. 2
Pages 38 - 48

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Autonomous Multi-Platform Observations During the Salinity Processes in the Upper-ocean Regional Study

By Eric J. Lindstrom , Andrey Y. Shcherbina, Luc Rainville, J. Thomas Farrar, Luca R. Centurioni, Shenfu Dong , Eric A. D’Asaro , Charles Eriksen, David M. Fratantoni, Benjamin A. Hodges, Verena Hormann, William S. Kessler, Craig M. Lee, Stephen C. Riser , Louis St. Laurent, and Denis L. Volkov  
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Article Abstract

The Salinity Processes in the Upper-ocean Regional Study (SPURS) aims to understand the patterns and variability of sea surface salinity. In order to capture the wide range of spatial and temporal scales associated with processes controlling salinity in the upper ocean, research vessels delivered autonomous instruments to remote sites, one in the North Atlantic and one in the Eastern Pacific. Instruments sampled for one complete annual cycle at each of these two sites, which are subject to contrasting atmospheric forcing. The SPURS field programs coordinated sampling from many different platforms, using a mix of Lagrangian and Eulerian approaches. This article discusses the motivations, implementation, and first results of the SPURS-1 and SPURS-2 programs.

Citation

Lindstrom, E.J., A.Y. Shcherbina, L. Rainville, J.T. Farrar, L.R. Centurioni, S. Dong, E.A. D’Asaro, C. Eriksen, D.M. Fratantoni, B.A. Hodges, V. Hormann, W.S. Kessler, C.M. Lee, S.C. Riser, L. St. Laurent, and D.L. Volkov. 2017. Autonomous multi-platform observations during the Salinity Processes in the Upper-ocean Regional Study. Oceanography 30(2):38–48, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2017.218.

Supplementary Materials

An animation of the evolution of the SPURS-2 Lagrangian observing system can be found online at https://youtu.be/nYScDvmsyHQ.

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Copyright & Usage

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