We use cookies to improve your experience, some are essential for the operation of this site.

Illlustration depicting Line W mooring and surrounding currents.

Illlustration depicting Line W mooring and surrounding currents.
Illlustration depicting Line W mooring and surrounding currents.
Illlustration depicting Line W mooring and surrounding currents.
Illlustration depicting Line W mooring and surrounding currents.
Comments (0)
175819
Oberlander, E. Paul
Illlustration depicting Line W mooring and surrounding currents.
Illustration
09/05/2006
currents.jpg
Caption from Oceanus magazine, Vol. 51, No. 2, pg. 43:
Line W Moorings consist of cables as tall as ten Empire State Buildings. The cables are anchored to the ocean floor and held upright by buoyant
glass spheres. Instruments ride up and down along the cables, measuring the temperature, salinity, depth, and velocity of the water as it flows by.
Oceanus online caption:
Line W has three moorings with profilers that travel up and down cables taking measurements of water salinity, temperature, and velocity. They are interspersed with moorings with sensors distributed along cables (including the GUSTO mooring). The moorings monitor the southward, cold Deep Western Boundary Current and the northward, warm, surface Gulf Stream, which act like an artery and vein in the North Atlantic Ocean circulation system.
Image of The Day caption:
Line W is an array of five moorings that has been monitoring changes in two currents that play important roles in regulating Earth's climate: the Gulf Stream (orange area) and the Deep Western Boundary Current hugging the U.S. Eastern Seaboard. It is one component in a long-term, international effort to observe most of the critical regions of the North Atlantic circulation system. Sensors on the Line W moorings take measurements of water salinity, temperature and velocity along both currents. So far, the research team has observed changes that appear to relate to fluctuations in the amount of dense, cold waters that are sinking upstream in the Labrador Sea. The team also reports that since 2000, salinity has decreased in the densest waters of the Deep Western Boundary Current at Line W--a signal, they believe, of fresher upstream waters spilling over the Greenland-Scotland Ridge into the North Atlantic from the Greenland, Iceland and Norwegian Seas (see "Interrogating the Ocean Conveyor" and "Fresher Ocean, Cooler Climate"). Line W was named after former WHOI Physical Oceanography Chair and Scientist Emeritus Valentine Worthington.
Illustration by E. Paul Oberlander
© Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Labels
This item includes these files
Image
Image
Collections