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Rest Before Work

March 21, 2018

The moon rises over calm seas the night before the deployment of the sixteenth Stratus surface mooring in May of 2017. The mooring has been maintained since 2000 by WHOI’s Upper Ocean Process Group at a site in the eastern South Pacific Ocean, where persistent cloud cover influences the exchange of heat between the ocean and atmosphere and where weather and climate models consistently predict sea surface temperatures that are too warm. The Stratus mooring serves as a source of accurate observations to guide improvements in models and improve understanding of the region and its interaction with the atmosphere. The group is now preparing to sail on the Chilean Navy ship Cabo de Hornos to deploy the seventeenth Stratus mooring and recover the sixteenth. (Photo by Raymond Graham, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)