A high precision analytical spectrometer for RV Investigator!
Posted: July 31, 2013 Filed under: Home Leave a commentDr Marcel van der Schoot is a project leader in the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate, a partnership between CSIRO and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
Dr van der Schoot’s area of research is studying the changing composition of the atmosphere in relation to regional and global climate processes and he has been championing for RV Investigator high precision trace gas analysers, capable of continuously measuring atmospheric greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.
The tender process for these pieces of advanced scientific equipment has concluded and they have been sent to Dr van der Schoot, who has been adapting them for life on board the RV Investigator.
In the photo below, the equipment with the screen on is the Cavity Ring Down Spectroscopy (CRDS) instrument, which will continuously measure carbon dioxide, methane and water vapour in the atmosphere, with high precision from the ship. The equipment without the screen (first photo) is a Quantum Cascade Laser (QCL) (now that is a cool name!) instrument, which will be used for the continuous, high-precision measurement of nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide and water vapour in the atmosphere.
So between the two pieces of equipment, researchers will have data regarding the main greenhouse gases covered.
This equipment will collect new, high quality, atmospheric greenhouse gas data, from regions of the ocean that may have never been sampled before. These data will help answer major scientific questions such as whether the Southern Ocean is saturating with respect to its capacity to absorb carbon dioxide.
This capability has not been possible on Southern Surveyor due to technology limitations but recent scientific developments have now made this possible for RV Investigator.
Update of the Southern Surveyor voyage (ss2013_v04) into the Indian Ocean
Posted: July 29, 2013 Filed under: Home | Tags: Australia's Marine National Facility, Indian Ocean, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, Leeuwin Current, Professor Nathan Bindoff, Southern Surveyor, University of Tasmania Leave a commentThe Principle Investigator for the recent Indian Ocean voyage, Professor Nathan Bindoff, from the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, has sent through and update.
Turns out they’ve been very busy onboard Southern Surveyor!
So why are we doing this research voyage?
The world is a changing place, and the oceans are playing an important role on those measured changes.
Climate change is causing the oceans to warm, causing some parts of the ocean to become more salty (from greater evaporation and lower rainfall), and some regions to become fresher (from increased rainfall).
We do not fully understand how the ocean circulates, where the waters are coming from and going to. This animation helps to explain what we do know and where the major ocean currents around Australia travel, which was created by CSIRO, the Wealth from Oceans Flagship and the Australian Climate Change Science Program.
This voyage is about discovering this sort of information about the southern parts of the Indian Ocean.
The aims of our research project are to:
-
Obtain new observations of the surface eastward flows and underlying westward flows.
To do this we are deploying floats that can measure the ocean currents, temperatures and salinities, which can measure ocean currents down to 1600 metres, and will do so for several months. We are also deploying surface drifters, which lie on the surface of the ocean, where they are blown by the wind and dragged by the surface ocean currents. -
Identify where the ocean currents come from, and how they drive circulation.
Some ocean currents have particular temperatures, salinities and oxygen levels and we can use this chemical and physical information to trace where they came from and where they are going. For example cold waters that are fresh and rich in oxygen come all the way from the surface of the Southern Ocean. -
The ocean is constantly stirred.
We also measure the stirring of the ocean using a probe designed specifically for this task (the crew thinks it looks like a test tube brush). -
The ocean has a surface that interacts with the atmosphere.
Indeed almost all the rain that falls on land was originally evaporated off the ocean. We are going to measure the surface evaporation (winds, temperatures and humidity) for years to come. To do this we deployed a mooring in the ocean, which is anchored in 5,000 metres of ocean depth.
When we get back to the laboratory we will use all of the data, from all of these experiments and equipment, and combine it with computer generated ocean models, and ocean physics, to understand the patterns of flow near the surface and all the way to the bottom of the ocean (5,000 metres below the surface). We will also compare the new temperature, salinity and oxygen data to see how much the ocean water has changed from the surface to the sea floor. And, answer questions like, has the ocean become warmer or more salty, and is there more evaporation?
So what have we done so far: the Leeuwin Current system.
The Leeuwin Current is a thin narrow current that flows along the West Australian coastline. It gets progressively stronger as it heads toward Cape Leeuwin. From space this current looks like a warm ribbon of water following the coastline, and extends beyond Cape Leeuwin into the Great Australian Bight. In other oceans, similar currents are found on the eastern side, except they all flow towards the equator. The Leeuwin is the only current of this type that flows away from the equator. Beneath the Leeuwin Current there is a current that flows northwards. This current is called the Leeuwin under current.
On this research voyage we have made measurements of the temperature and salinity, vertically, from the surface to the seafloor. These measurements are made from a CTD, which is a conductivity -temperature-depth instrument. This instrument also measures ocean currents with a Lowered Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (LADCP). So far we have completed 13 profiles. At times the surface currents exceeded 0.75 m/s or about 2.7 kilometres an hour.
We are trying to answer questions like, what is the speed and size of the Leeuwin Current, is there a strong undercurrent, and with our models find the explanation for the reasons why the flow is southward unlike all the other similar current systems around the world.
The water purification systems arrive in Hobart!
Posted: July 24, 2013 Filed under: Home | Tags: Australia's Marine National Facility, Future Research Vessel Project, Group 2 scientific equipment, RV Investigator Leave a commentCSIRO’s Dave Terhell has been championing a few pieces of scientific equipment for RV Investigator.
Only a few weeks ago he was taking delivery of the Niskin bottles for the 24 bottle CTD rosette, at the CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Laboratories in Hobart.
Now he’s unpacking boxes containing the ships scientific water purification systems.
These systems will purify the water to allow for analyses at the parts per million (ppm) or high parts per billion (ppb) levels.
Why do we need this? Well the pure water produced by the systems allow scientists to wash out glassware and other equipment, to remove any contaminants, such as bacteria and particulates, that may exist from any previous experiments.
Even more importantly, the pure water is used to make up reagents used in chemical analysis of the seawater, preventing contamination during the analysis.
By having pressurised bacteria-free water, we can conduct more accurate experiments onboard the ship!






RV Investigator’s weather research radar lifted into place!
Posted: July 22, 2013 Filed under: Home | Tags: Australia's Marine National Facility, Future Research Vessel Project, Future Reserach Vessel Project, RV Investigator, ship construction, Weather research radar Leave a commentIn April this year we announced that we had concluded the tender process for the purchase of a weather research radar with some very impressive capabilities.
It will help answer some of the big questions about weather, climate and the atmosphere in remote areas of the world’s oceans.
Data will be gathered from clouds towering 20 kilometres over the tropical ocean, to cold ice storms in the Antarctic, in a 300 kilometre diametre around the ship.
The Enterprise Electronics Corporation dual-polarisation weather radar supplied by Environmental Systems & Services, which are based in Melbourne, Australia, is part of a new generation of weather technology that is being compared to the difference in television between black and white to colour technology.
The greater detail provided by the state-of-the-art device will allow meteorologists to gather more information about the atmosphere than ever before for research purposes, including clearly seeing the difference between rain and snow.
The weather research radar has now been lifted into place, on top of RV Investigator, and the photos are incredible.
Hydrochemistry onboard Southern Surveyor
Posted: July 18, 2013 Filed under: Home | Tags: Australia's Marine National Facility, Australian Bureau of M, CTD, Hydrochemistry, Indian Ocean, Southern Surveyor Leave a commentOnboard Southern Surveyor, the Hydrochemistry Group is responsible for the chemistry analysis.

CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research support staff onboard Southern Surveyor (l to r) Mark Rayner, Sue Reynolds, Dave Terhell and Peter Hughes.
An instrument called a CTD, which measures conductivity, temperature and depth, is lowered over the side of the ship when it’s stationary, to take water samples. The CTD has some electronic probes on it that can measure different things, such as saltiness of the water, temperature and the oxygen content. The CTD is lowered through the water column, to within a few metres of the ocean floor.
The CTD also has a number of water bottles attached to it, that can be remotely operated from onboard the ship, to take samples of water at specific depths.
The samples are analysed to determine the concentration of salts, oxygen and nutrients in the water at different depths. The nutrients that are being analysed are nitrates, phosphates and silicates. These are the same nutrients that are found on land in any garden and are just as important to marine ecosystems as they are to land based ecosystems.
This information can be used by biologists to see the quantity of nutrients that are available for the micro organisms in the water. The nutrients are at the bottom of the food chain and are essential to all life cycles that occur in the ocean. Nutrients are consumed by lower plant form such as algae which in turn are consumed by organisms further up the food chain.
However, on this voyage into the Indian Ocean, this information is used by oceanographers to track large currents, and to identify particular water masses, using the different concentrations of nutrients.
Safety comes first!
Posted: July 17, 2013 Filed under: Home | Tags: Australia's Marine National Facility, Future Research Vessel Project, safety, ship building Leave a commentThe Future Research Vessel Project has celebrated its focus on safety in the construction of Australia’s new Marine National Facility research vessel Investigator.
There was a cause for celebration at the Sembawang Shipyard in Singapore, the construction site of the Marine National Facility’s new vessel, Investigator, as two million man hours have passed without a lost time injury.
The companies working on the project – Teekay Australia and Sembawang Shipyard Pte Ltd – recently celebrated this milestone with CSIRO.
The Executive Director of the Future Research Vessel Project, Toni Moate, visited the shipyard in Singapore with Board chairman Simon McKeon and Deputy Chief Executive Craig Roy.
‘The ship has come a long way since we started construction with flat sheets of steel in January 2012, and it’s a credit to all the teams here at the Sembawang shipyard that we’ve been able to maintain a zero lost time injury record to date’, Toni said.
CSIRO’s Owners Representative in Singapore, Graham Stacey, welcomed the achievement but he wasn’t keen to make too big a deal as he said there’s still more work to do and his goal is to complete the project with a clean safety record.
How the bridge has changed!
Posted: July 16, 2013 Filed under: Home | Tags: Australia's Marine National Facility, Future Research Vessel Project, RV Investigator, ship construction 1 CommentRemember when we used to update you with a graphic to let you know which block went where, and how the construction and assembly was going?
Here’s the graphic indicating block 401, or the bridge. Looking through some of the images of block 401 over the months, the progress is amazing.
From bare steel in the fabrication shed, to being painted and lifted onto the ship, and then the windows and the console being installed.
Check out the photos!