Application of collected data
Presentations at the DBCP Technical Workshop
Buenos Aires, Argentina, 17-18 October 2005

Theme 3: Vision and Possibilities / Technological Developments

20. The results of the new drifters development and testing in-situ

Authors: Motyzhev S.*, Horton E.**, Lunev E.*, Kirichenko A.*, Tolstosheev A.*
* Marine Hydrophysical Institute NASU/Marlin-Yug Ltd, Ukraine
** Naval Oceanographic Office, Stennis Space Center,USA

Abstract: During this intersession period, the further development of drifter technology, to have operational temperature profiles of active layer by means of bathythermographic drifters, has been carried out. Two experimental buoys were deployed in the Black Sea in April 2005 to investigate the technology as a whole. A few short boat expeditions were carried out to test new system of tether and temperature chain setting to have the buoy air deployed without meshing of these buoy's parts during automatic deployment after air dropping. The software for data processing from this kind of drifter was developed and a few versions of the software were created in coordination with NAVOCEANO and Meteo-France. 

Joint experiment with bathythermographic drifter and Argo profiling float was carried out in the Black Sea to compare the temperature profiles provided by both buoys, when they had approximately same locations. To provide the further data assimilation by a user, the method, to have the buoy's data put on GTS, has been developed. Evaluation of the results of barometric pressure (BP) measurement by means of SVPB drifters with smaller hull as well as by bathythermographic buoys deployed in the Black Sea for the first part of 2005 showed that there are the problems with accuracy of BP measurements for new buoys when some wind took place. On the other hand, the analysis of so called storm buoys in operation showed that 2003 generation of this buoy did not have any problems with accuracy of BP samples. A few buoys deployed in 2003 had been keeping high quality of BP measurements for 2003 storm season as well as for next 2004 storm season even during strong hurricanes. All this has become a reason to organize additional investigation of this matter to understand the entity and eliminate the problem. Intercalibration of Ukrainian BP state standard was done to remove systematic BP shift near 0.9 hPa between Marlin and other drifters.