SIO SWOT / NOPP moorings S1-S4 are in the water, telemetering, and functioning as designed!

The weather held off this morning, allowing us to get a relatively early and efficient start. Although the weather deteriorated to some extent over the course of the day, we were able to safely deploy the final mooring less than 100 yards from the target.

The SIO SWOT NOPP real-time data can be found here: https://mooring.ucsd.edu/swot2/

The Wirewalker profiler performance has been excellent at all moorings since deployment, averaging 500 m round trips every 30 min. The fixed instruments have all been performing as expected too.

The NOPP contribution to this effort has significantly increased the scientific scope of the Cal/Val by adding velocity measurements at mooring S2 and PIES/C-PIES in association with moorings S1, S2, and S3. Likewise, this was a great synergy from the perspective of the NOPP program, allowing us to get started collecting ocean observations early on, and to partner with a great team of numerical modelers.

This project has required hard work from many folks over the last months and years, and facilitation and trust from our JPL partners. It is my great pleasure to be finally collecting observations for SWOT and NOPP.

I’d especially like to thank the technical and sea-going team that made this happen. It is no small feat to design, test, re-design, and build a new class of deep-ocean moorings and get them safely in the water in the North Pacific in February. On the latter subject, I’d like to particularly commend Drew Cole, our mooring deck lead at sea, for a well-run and safe set of deployments. I am equally grateful for the hard work, enthusiasm, and toughness of the Scripps team, Tyler Hughen from Del Mar Oceanographic, Jessica Kozik from WHOI, Josh Mitchell, and finally the Captain and Crew of the R/V Bold Horizon.

We are headed for San Diego with — as it happens — fair winds and following seas. See you all soon.

Drew Lucas, the IWR array team and the team on the Bold Horizon