Stratus Ocean Reference Station (20˚S, 85˚W), mooring recovery and deployment cruise R/V Revelle cruise dana 03, November 10 - November 26, 2003

Funding was provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uncer Contract Number NA17RJ1223.

The Ocean Reference Station at 20° S, 85° W under the stratus clouds west of northernChile and Peru is being maintained to provide ongoing, climate-quality records of surfacemeteorology, of air-sea fluxes of heat, freshwater, and momentum, and of upper oceantemperature, salinity, and velocity variability. The Stratus Ocean Reference Station,hereafter ORS Stratus, is supported by the National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministrations (NOAA) Climate Observation Program. It is recovered and redeployedannually, with cruises that have come in October or November.During the November 2003 cruise of Scripps Institution of Oceanography's R/V RogerRevelle to the ORS Stratus site, the primary activities where the recovery of the WHOIsurface mooring that had been deployed in October 2002, the deployment of a new WHOIsurface mooring at that site, the in-situ calibration of the buoy meteorological sensors bycomparison with instrumentation put on board by Chris Fairall of the NOAAEnvironmental Technology Laboratory (ETL), and observations of the stratus clouds andlower atmosphere by NOAA ETL and Jason Tomlinson from Texas A&M.The ORS Stratus buoys are equipped with two Improved Meteorological systems, whichprovide surface wind speed and direction, air temperature, relative humidity, barometricpressure, incoming shortwave radiation, incoming longwave radiation, precipitation rate,and sea surface temperature. The IMET data are made available in near real time usingsatellite telemetry. The mooring line carries instruments to measure ocean salinity,temperature, and currents. On some deployments, additional instrumentation is attached tothe mooring to measure rainfall and bio-optical variability. The ETL instrumentation usedduring the 2003 cruise included a cloud radar, radiosonde balloons, and sensors for meanand turbulent surface meteorology.In addition to this work, buoy work was done in support of the Ecuadorian Navy Instituteof Oceanography (INOCAR) and of the Chilean Navy Hydrographic and OceanographicService (SHOA). The surface buoy, oceanographic instrumentation, and upper 500 m ofan INOCAR surface mooring at 2°S, 84°W that had been vandalized were recovered andtransferred to the Ecuadorian Navy vessel B. A. E. Calicuchima. A tsunami warningmooring was installed at 75°W, 20°S for SHOA. SHOA personnel onboard were trainedduring the cruise by staff from the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory(PMEL) and National Data Buoy Center (NDBC). The cruise hosted two teachersparticipating in NOAA's Teacher at Sea Program, Deb Brice from San Marcos, Californiaand Viviana Zamorano from Arica, Chile.