CBLAST Data Analysis: Air-Sea Interaction Floats

The objective of this program is to analyze data from the deployment of a class of low-cost instruments that were deployed into hurricanes during the Coupled Boundary Layer Air Sea Transfer (CBLAST) initiative. Measurements of the air-sea interface in very high sea states present a difficult challenge for both remote sensing techniques and in-situ moored or shipboard instrumentation. While the satellitebased remote-sensing techniques generally lose accuracy in high sea-states due to a lack of understanding of the physics of the parameter that is measured and inverted (ie. microwave scattering, EM bias, passive microwave), in-situ measurements are difficult due to the environmental loading placed on the instrumentation and survivability of moorings. Shipboard instrumentation in high seastates is either too costly for long-term measurements or presents a danger to the personnel onboard the vessel. With significant effort and cost, moorings and surface buoys can be designed to withstand the rigors of the sea-surface during these conditions. However, the statistical nature of very high wind events such as hurricanes, typhoons, and large winter storms requires that moorings be deployed over long periods of time in order to raise the probability of the instrumentation being in the right place and at the right time. The recent improvement of synoptic, predictive models of storm events now presents the opportunity for adaptively sampling the upper ocean during storms through strategic placement of light-weight, low-cost instrumentation in the path of incoming storm events.