Fig 11. Hardware, left to right: Arduino Uno R3, RockBLOCK, Adafruit GPS, Thermistor.
Abstract
The Labrador Sea is an important area for wintertime convection, with possible influences on global overturning. While there is a debate in the scientific community as to the exact effects of deepwater formation on the overall circulation, recent studies have shown that the area is susceptible to very small-scale processes that conventional model resolutions can, if at all, only reproduce with immense effort and at times large error due to parameterization. There is a need for more observational data to validate models and provide initial conditions, especially concerning the pathways of freshwater off the Greenland ice shelf, which could disrupt the convection process. For this project, drifters at under £300/ each are supposed to be deployed in a cluster. Conventional surface drifters are analysed and, because they are not sufficiently suited to this task of following the freshwater currents off Greenland at the surface, a new drifter is designed and presented. Given the time constraints of the project, the design involves a working (dry tested) prototype with regards to the sampling of temperature, locating the drifter through GPS and transmitting the data via the Iridium network at reprogrammable intervals. Power usage and optimization has been analysed, tested and calculated, but not implemented. The exterior casing, including materials and deployment, as well as the overall costs of the drifter have been conceptually designed, calculated and discussed, and alternatives and suggestions for future work are presented.