Days 4 and 5 of AEROSE

I have run out of chocolate today (Day 4). This is not a good thing. Somehow, I neglected to stock up properly. Fortunately, the stewards are really killing it in the kitchen. I do not remember the food aboard the Brown ever being this good. The food for each meal is served cafeteria-style with several entrees of meat, vegetables, starch, and a small salad bar. There are three meals a day at the set times of 7:00am to 8:00am, 11:15am to 12:00pm, and 4:30pm to 5:30 pm. Quite often, the tastiest dishes are gone by the time I straggle up to the galley before lunchtime or dinnertime closes. I rarely make breakfast unless we have an overnight operation. In my previous four times on this ship (nearly six-months at sea), I cannot recall a similar occasion. We do have a reasonably large contingent aboard this cruise – 49 people including the three science teams, the crew, and the NOAA Corps officers. I suspect that the stewards are holding out on the “good stuff” – the designer ice cream at least I hope so. I am looking forward to something to sate my sweet tooth over the next couple of weeks.

We are moving through the part of the ocean known as the doldrums. Here the sea is glassy and smooth. The surface of the ocean undulates and ripples like the skin over the taut muscles of a huge, sinewy beast. To me, it is one of the most beautiful parts of the world. Since passing south of the ITCZ, we are enjoying more clear and blue skies. A school of dolphins came along the bow of the ship jumping out of the water in groups of three and four at a time. Yesterday, we also saw a few dolphins off the port side of the ship. It was a pleasant break to the barrenness of the region. As peaceful as it is out here with the purple and red sunsets, the deep blues and aquamarine colors in the ocean, a little bit of life is a welcome change. Other than the dolphins, there have been no sightings of birds, fish, sharks, whales, or other sea life.

We have changed two time zones in the past two days. That is taking a toll on the late nighters who stay up for the midnight matinee. We should not change more than once more. The time changes have nothing to do with time zones. They are a matter of practicality to make optimal use of the daylight hours for the crew. Our van was powered up today (Day 5) and most of the instruments (for gases, radiation, and aerosols) are ready or currently operating. I expect that we will be operational tomorrow – just in time for pristine, background marine air. We have run into a snag with our balloon operations. Apparently, a communication problem has arisen that is either a card malfunction or a software bug that we will have to resolve via electronic communication with the manufacturer. Our desperate hope is that the receiving unit does not have an irreparable hardware problem. We have been unable to launch a successful radiosonde since Day 4. The first two radiosondes went well but we are quite worried about the fate of this component of the mission because it is a cornerstone activity of the cruises. The radiosondes and ozonesondes provide us with unique insights into the thermodynamic structure of the atmosphere, transport and mixing, vertical structure, and response to air mass intrusions. Their data provide the context within which we interpret many of our measurements. I am looking forward to tomorrow. We have some members of our team feverishly working to resolve this issue.

Day 4 was indeed a full day. I spent most of the day on top of the trailer on the bow of the ship installing intake shrouds, threading tubing, and installing equipment. I always enjoy days like this; being out in the sun, feeling the warmth of the day, working with my hands and seeing the fruits of my labors. The search for new knowledge in the field is cathartic experience for me. I have grown to look forward to it each year. I also set the seminar schedule today and also gave the first seminar – “Why Should We Study Aerosols Over the Tropical Oceans?”. I was a little surprised that there were not any questions until afterwards but I gather from the non-verbal response that it went over well. We will have an informal seminar every two days immediately following the weather briefing and team updates. Once we begin the routine measurement schedule, I will start training the students to analyze their data. This is a challenging part of the cruise, as it requires patience, time, and hard work to begin to address the “whys” of what we observe and how best to represent the data we have collected to address the open scientific questions.

We are still making good time as we head towards the equator. Once there, we will have a full complement of operations day and night. The buzz of activity makes the time on the ship move along a lot faster. At present, my team is the most active during the day, scampering all over the ship taking measurements, installing instrumentation, launching balloons, etc. The other two teams are preparing for a hectic schedule of oceanographic operations beginning in about four days. I am looking forward to this time, too. We just skirted the edge of an “old” dust storm – catching just a tip of it at the surface and about two days of seeing dust aloft. This is a little disappointing to me as the dust is the major reason for the cruise. Intersecting these events are perfect storms of chance, preparation, anticipation, and focused action. They punctuate the long and difficult waiting periods while out at sea. Smoke from distant fires in African or South American savannahs and forests are the next wishful source of excitement. Absent these events, there is still plenty of atmospheric science to be conducted but the objectives of the main mission will not be met. The current forecasts appear to suggest that we will not see any smoke until after we reach the equator (in about 4 days). We will have to wait a little longer to have confidence in a forecast for more smoke (biomass aerosols), pollution from West African cities like Lagos, Dakar, Accra, or Luanda, and, especially, dust. We still have a good six to seven days before such an encounter and forecasts accurate enough to predict that. Therefore, we wait.