Marine Robots Could Help Improve Forecasts of European Weather

Posted by Ocean News Published: 25 October 2018 .

Mooring with tall building. Image credit: NOC

A team of scientists from the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) will be on board to acquire data from an array of instruments in the Atlantic Ocean, between the west coast of Africa and the east coast of the USA. Currently data from these instruments, referred to collectively as the RAPID array, are gathered once every 18 months by a research ship. However, on this expedition the researchers will be testing a new system that will use marine robots to retrieve data from the instruments.

“ Currently more than 200 instruments are in the water gathering data on the temperature, salinity and flow rate of a system of ocean currents sometimes described as the ‘Atlantic conveyor belt’, or the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). ”

The scientific instruments that comprise the RAPID array are deployed on 'moorings', wires that extend from an anchor on the seafloor, sometimes more than 5km deep, to just below the sea-surface. A new unit, developed at the NOC’s laboratories in Southampton and Liverpool, will be attached to one of these moorings to gather data from all the instruments on the wire and then transmit the data using sound signals to a marine robot called a “Wave Glider” at the sea surface, which will in turn send the data by satellite to scientists at the NOC.

"This new system will enable us to get data that could in the future improve seasonal weather forecasts for Europe", says project scientist Darren Rayner from the NOC. “The system has successfully completed a short trial in water 600m deep, but an 18-month deployment in water 4,000m deep is a much tougher test”

Currently more than 200 instruments are in the water gathering data on the temperature, salinity and flow rate of a system of ocean currents sometimes described as the ‘Atlantic conveyor belt’, or the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). AMOC is responsible for the transfer of large volumes of heat from the tropics to northwest Europe, keeping its climate relatively mild. The energy involved in this heat transfer is equivalent to 35,000 times the average rate of electricity consumption in the UK or about one million times the output of an average UK nuclear power station.

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