Credit S. Cunningham
(Falmouth, MA) – The RAS-500 is among in-situ instruments in the Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program (OSNAP) program collecting long-term data on how climate change impacts important Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) processes.
Prof. Stuart Cunningham, Scottish Association of Marine Science (SAMS), is among the principal investigators conducting Atlantic deployments on OSNAP mooring arrays. OSNAP has developed a multi-decadal observing system where a few critical in-situ observations from instruments such as the RAS-500, coupled with satellite observations and an Argo float array, will provide a reliable and sustainable measure of the AMOC for decades to come.
Prof. Cunningham conducts nutrient and carbon concentration analysis from in-situ samples, using a RAS-500 obtained through project ATLAS (A Trans-AtLantic Assessment and deep-water ecosystem-based Spatial management plan for Europe). Combining these measurements with measurements of the North Atlantic circulation indicates how the North Atlantic biogeochemistry works and helps researchers understand the role of the Atlantic in absorbing anthropogenic carbon.
Recently, a RAS-500 was deployed at 50m deep in the Rockall Trough and collected samples every 10 days for one year. Prof. Cunningham’s next OSNAP cruise, scheduled for October, will turn around CLASS and OSNAP moorings in the Rockall Trough and Iceland Basin.
The Remote Access Sampler (RAS) is a deep water or coastal time series water sampler that collects samples for biological, dissolved major and minor nutrient, dissolved trace metal, or dissolved organic carbon analyses. The RAS sampler collects ambient water and suspended material in Tedlar® bags, isolating the samples for subsequent laboratory analysis.
McLane Research Laboratories manufactures time-series in situ oceanographic instrumentation for scientific deployments in the open ocean, and freshwater environments. Three main oceanographic product lines are available: profilers, samplers and flotation.
McLane instruments have been deployed worldwide in some of the most remote oceans on earth. Products are delivered worldwide both directly and through international sales representatives.
Learn more about the RAS-500 and other McLane instruments at http://www.mclanelabs.com
Read full article Climate Change, Ocean Currents, and Weather: https://www.wearthwhile.org/cgi-sys/suspendedpage.cgi
Read more about OSNAP cruises and instrument arrays https://www.o-snap.org/
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