Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2006

R/V MIRAI

"upside-down ..."

Fine
Easterly (3m/s) prevailed again and wave height was 1.5 m.

Observations:

Radiosonde observation, CTD casting, and other continuous observations have been conducted.
Snow-white sonde was launched at 1100 LST.
In the calm sea condition, intake SST reached to 30.5 degC, and only shallow convections developed. Later, some cngestus clouds also developed (photo-1). Although westerly still prevailed at 800-600 hPa layer, wind near the surface was changed to the easterly. These wind pattern may be related to the influence of the Indian Ocean Dipole. Large cloud area, however, can be found in the west of 70E in the satellite cloud images. Therefore, we will carefully look at the progress of the atmosphere in the coming two weeks.

Remarks:

Time-height cross section of the meridional wind suggests the existance of equatorial waves with 3-5-day periodicity. Although various data suggest that we may have an onset of MJO-convections soon, similar conditions have continued for past one week. Since the purpose of MISMO is to obtain the atmospheric and oceanic data in the onset period of MJO-convections, we are now just in such a situation. But, we are inclined to have the deep convections. Therefore, someone put the upside-down talisman for fine weather on the wall (photo-2), that is believed to have rain... In any cases, we came together to check the current situation by Doppler radar (photo-3).
Photo-4 shows one scene of CTD observation. No.1 Oiler who controls the winch check the situation (photo-5) through the window.