• Login
    About WHOAS
    View Item 
    •   WHOAS Home
    • Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    • Physical Oceanography (PO)
    • View Item
    •   WHOAS Home
    • Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    • Physical Oceanography (PO)
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

    All of WHOASCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesKeywordsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesKeywords

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics

    Use of the High Resolution Profiler (HRP) in the Salt Finger Tracer Release Experiment (SFTRE)

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    WHOI-2002-04.pdf (1.436Mb)
    Date
    2002-07
    Author
    Montgomery, Ellyn T.  Concept link
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Citable URI
    https://hdl.handle.net/1912/39
    Location
    Barbados
    DOI
    10.1575/1912/39
    Keyword
     Salt-fingers; Thermohaline staircase; Diffusive mixing; Oceanus (Ship : 1975-) Cruise OC365; Seward Johnson (Ship) Cruise SJ01-12 
    Abstract
    The Salt Finger Tracer Release Experiment (SFTRE) was conducted in the tropical North Atlantic in 2001. The experimental area was east of Barbados and is characterized by thermohaline staircase features prevalent in the depth range of 200−600 meters. The goal of this experiment was to quantify the distribution and intensity of vertical mixing in a region of thermohaline staircases. Two cruises were required to accomplish this goal: one to survey with the High Resolution Profiler (HRP) and inject sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) tracer, and another ten months later to map the spatial distribution of tracer and obtain additional estimates of diffusive and turbulent mixing rates using the HRP. The first cruise of the SFTRE experiment took place between January 15 and February 12, 2001 on the R/V Oceanus, leg 365-2 (OC365). An XBT survey identified an area of robust staircases that became the injection site. Then 175 kg of SF6 tracer was injected in nine streaks in a layer with temperature of about 10°C. When the injection mechanism was being replenished, HRP profiles were made in the area of the tracer patch. The profiles yielded estimates of the mixing rates at the start of the experiment. Near the end of the cruise, water samples from the patch were used to map the actual tracer distribution immediately after deployment. The second cruise occurred between October 29 and December 4 on the R/V Seward Johnson, leg 01−12 (SJ0112). Its objective was to sample and map the vertical and horizontal distribution of tracer after ten months. The work completed included 172 CTD casts with chemical analysis performed on the water samples, and 165 HRP profiles. Despite covering an area of 500,000 nautical miles², only 50−60% of the tracer was found, suggesting higher than expected lateral mixing. The SFTRE included the deployment of a Moored Profiler. The profiles acquired by the MP provide background on the temporal variation of the temperature, salinity, and velocity fields where it was deployed. To share costs of personnel, the MP was deployed and recovered on cruises that followed ours, in conjunction with other mooring activities. The MP was deployed in February 2001 from R/V Oceanus and recovered by the R/V Knorr in April 2002. The program was a success, despite not fully delimiting the tracer distribution, because the observations allow more complete quantification of the mixing processes occurring in this region. The inferred mixing intensity was stronger and the influence of the thermohaline staircases more widespread than initially expected.
    Collections
    • Physical Oceanography (PO)
    • WHOI Technical Reports
    Suggested Citation
    Montgomery, E. T. (2002). Use of the High Resolution Profiler (HRP) in the Salt Finger Tracer Release Experiment (SFTRE). Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. https://doi.org/10.1575/1912/39
     

    Related items

    Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.

    • Thumbnail

      Finger puzzles 

      Schmitt, Raymond W. (Cambridge University Press, 2012-01-24)
      Salt fingers are a form of double-diffusive convection that can occur in a wide variety of fluid systems, ranging from stellar interiors and oceans to magma chambers. Their amplitude has long been difficult to quantify, ...
    • Thumbnail

      Thermohaline convection at density ratios below one : a new regime for salt fingers 

      Schmitt, Raymond W. (Sears Foundation for Marine Research, 2011-07-01)
      New experimental results on haline convection show a surprising preference for narrow fingers over large-scale convection when even a small stabilizing temperature gradient is present (Hage and Tilgner, 2010). This regime ...
    • Thumbnail

      Virtual finger boosts three-dimensional imaging and microsurgery as well as terabyte volume image visualization and analysis 

      Peng, Hanchuan; Tang, Jianyong; Xiao, Hang; Bria, Alessandro; Zhou, Jianlong; Butler, Victoria; Zhou, Zhi; Gonzalez-Bellido, Paloma T.; Oh, Seung W.; Chen, Jichao; Mitra, Ananya; Tsien, Richard W.; Zeng, Hongkui; Ascoli, Giorgio A.; Iannello, Giulio; Hawrylycz, Michael; Myers, Eugene; Long, Fuhui (Nature Publishing Group, 2014-07-11)
      Three-dimensional (3D) bioimaging, visualization and data analysis are in strong need of powerful 3D exploration techniques. We develop virtual finger (VF) to generate 3D curves, points and regions-of-interest in the 3D ...
    All Items in WHOAS are protected by original copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated. WHOAS also supports the use of the Creative Commons licenses for original content.
    A service of the MBLWHOI Library | About WHOAS
    Contact Us | Send Feedback | Privacy Policy
    Core Trust Logo