Thursday, Nov. 23, 2006

R/V MIRAI

"clouds, stars, and "

Fine
Northerly wind (5m/sec) prevailed. Significant wave height was 1.6 m.

Observations:

Radiosonde observation was done every 3 hours. CTD observation was conducted at 0630 LST and 1630 LST. At 0600 LST, we arrived at (0, 79E), where we will station for 3 days.
According to the satellite cloud images, active cloud area is located just south of the equator. Over the MIRAI, we had no organized large-scale clouds, instead sometimes hot tower was observed (photo-1).

Remarks:

From today, we will keep the position at (0, 79E) and conduct the atmospheric observations as well as recovery of mooring systems. Today, we performed the maintenance of some instruments. Photos 2-3 show that the marine technician check the PRP system at the foremast.
Also, we removed the antenna of wind profiler (photos 4-5).
Although some data indicate that it is under the convectively active phase of the MJO, we have clear weather and can see a lot of stars at night. In any cases, we will carefully observe the atmospheric condition for the last three days.