Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2006

R/V MIRAI

"end of the stationary observation"

Fine, later cloudy. At night, it had rain.
South-westerly (4 m/sec) prevailed and wave height was 1.6 m.

Observations:

At 1630 LST, we did the last CTD casting as the stationary observation at (0, 80.5E). After that, we conduct only radiosonde observation every 3 hours. After the launch of the radiosonde at 2230 LST, we finished to station at (0, 80.5E) for 25 days period and then started to cruise to (0, 82E).
In the daytime, we had fine weather and shallow convections often developed (photo-1), and then it was overcasted with clouds in the evening (photo-2). At night, meso-scale convective system that developed east of MIRAI passed away over the MIRAI and brought rain. We can still confirm that large-scale clouds area lies in the entire tropical Indian Ocean.

Remarks:

At last, we are facing to the end of the MISMO leg-1 cruise. Although we are leaving stationary observation point at (0, 80.5E), we will continue to conduct the radiosonde observation every 3 hours as well as other continuous observation such as Doppler radar. Therefore, we still chase the MJO convections.
Photos 3-4 show the scenes of replacing the helium gas cylinder for radiosonde observation. Empty cylinders are stored in the warehouse downstairs.
In addition, we finished to conduct seasnake SST measurement as well as other surface measurements (photo-5).