Two SVP-BTC80 drifters were successfully deployed in west part of the Black Sea in early July 2006. This new generation of drifters is a prolongation of Marlin efforts to progress a drifter technology to investigate heat processes inside active layer of ocean.
New temperature profiling SVP-BTC80 drifter in contrast with SVP-BTC60 drifter has following features:
- nominal depth of profiling is 80m;
- 16 digital temperature sensors;
- 4 depths sensors at 15, 35, 60 and 80m;
- drogue center at 12.5m.
Temperature measurements by means of SVP-BTC80 thermoprofiling drifting buoy allows to watch carefully the dynamics of the active layer thermal structure from surface to maximum depth of a chain with high time resolution (one hour). For example, this feature provided unique information about the cold intermediate layer variability as well as lower border of mixed layer during summer-autumn period in the Black Sea.
The location of each temperature sensor should be processed with taking into account the data from depth sensors. Same job was done for previous SVP-BTC60 drifters when numerical model together with data from one depth sensor at the bottom of chain was used. Using of additional depth sensors for SVP-BTC80 provides verifying this model and makes the information about temperature profile more accurate. The result of this year deployment shown that accepted numerical model is reliable and it is possible to use it in future with one sensor only at the end of chain to get the accuracy within +/-1m range. Thus, the cost of such chain should be smaller in contrast with chain with additional intermediate depth sensors. To support the customers, some user’s scripts and original software were developed for quick and easy recovering of temperature sensors locations.
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| SVP-BTC80 tracks (July-November 2006) |
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| Depths of isotherms using SVP-BTC80 ID56092 data (July-August 2006) |
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| SVP-BTC80 temperature profiling drifter |
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