Stratus 17 seventeenth setting of the Stratus Ocean Reference Station cruise on board RV Cabo de Hornos April 3 - 16, 2018 Valparaiso - Valparaiso, Chile

Abstract

The Ocean Reference Station at 20°S, 85°W under the stratus clouds west of northern Chile is being maintained to provide ongoing climate-quality records of surface meteorology, air-sea fluxes of heat, freshwater, and momentum, and of upper ocean temperature, salinity, and velocity variability. The Stratus Ocean Reference Station (ORS Stratus) is supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Observation Program. It is recovered and redeployed annually, with past cruises that have come between October and May. This cruise was conducted on the Chilean research vessel Cabo de Hornos. During the 2018 cruise on the Cabo de Hornos to the ORS Stratus site, the primary activities were the recovery of the previous (Stratus 16) WHOI surface mooring, deployment of the new Stratus 17 WHOI surface mooring, in-situ calibration of the buoy meteorological sensors by comparison with instrumentation installed on the ship, CTD casts near the moorings. The Stratus 17 had parted from its anchor site on January 4 2018, so its recovery was done in two separate operations: first the drifting buoy with mooring line under it, then the bottom part still attached to the anchor. Surface drifters and ARGO floats were also launched along the track.