WHOI Hawaii Ocean Timeseries Station (WHOTS): WHOTS-6 2009 Mooring Turnaround Cruise Report

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Hawaii Ocean Timeseries Site (WHOTS), 100 km north of Oahu, Hawaii, is intended to provide long-term, high-quality air-sea fluxes as a part of the NOAA Climate Observation Program. The WHOTS mooring also serves as part of the Hawaiian Ocean Timeseries (HOT) program, observing heat, fresh water and chemical fluxes at a site representative of the oligotrophic North Pacific Ocean. The approach is to maintain a surface mooring outfitted for meteorological and oceanographic measurements by successive mooring turnarounds. These observations will be used to investigate air-sea interaction processes related to climate variability. The first WHOTS mooring (WHOTS-1) was deployed in August 2004. Turnaround cruises for successive moorings (WHOTS-2 through WHOTS-5) have typically been in either June or July. This report documents recovery of the WHOTS-5 mooring and deployment of the sixth mooring (WHOTS-6). The moorings utilize Surlyn foam buoys as the surface element and are outfitted with two Air-Sea Interaction Meteorology (ASIMET) systems. Each ASIMET system measures, records, and transmits the surface meteorological variables necessary to compute air-sea fluxes of heat, moisture and momentum. The upper 155 m of the mooring is outfitted with oceanographic sensors for the measurement of temperature, conductivity and velocity. The WHOTS mooring turnaround was done on the University of Hawaii research vessel Kilo Moana, Cruise KM-09-16. The cruise took place 9-17 July 2009. This report describes the cruise operations, as well as some of the in-port operations and pre-cruise buoy preparations. Final version issued as WHOI-2010-02/ UPO-TR-2010-01, Feb 2010. Prepared in cooperation with University of Hawaii (UH), Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL), Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Australia, and NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL). The original document contains color images. All DTIC reproductions will be in black and white.