Profiling performance for the NOPP / SWOT calval moorings has been ongoing and excellent at all moorings for 100 days! A total of ~18,000 round trips from the Wirewalkers have been collected from the 4 moorings. This equates to a 500 m upcast profile every 35 min at each mooring on average. There is a great deal of variability between the four moorings (each separated by ~30 km), even in the long-wavelength internal tide.

Here is the Wirewalker profiler data from one of the moorings. It shows the awesome temporal and vertical resolution of the profiler data. We are imaging the slowly-changing mesoscale, the internal wave continuum (from f to 1 cycle per hour), mixed layer evolution, and passing submesoscale features. (Note that the telemetry rate was reduced for a short period before the official start of the Cal/Val in order to conserve buoy batteries. All data are stored internally so we expect to have a complete record after recovery.)

These observations are unique and represent our team’s best-ever collective effort to produce a time series like this in the open ocean. In combination with the other assets deployed in the Cal/Val mooring array (including NOPP PIES), SWOT and SMODE/NAVO gliders, and of course the KaRiN data, we have a great chance of doing something special with the SWOT Cal/Val and the GIW-NOPP field programs.

— Drew and the IWR array team