R/V Ronald H. Brown Daily Summaries

Daily Summary July 20, 2002, DOY = 201

As predicted, the winds throughout the period were primarily from the northeast. Early in the morning the winds were about 10 knots out of the NNE. Throughout the day they veered to the east and became lighter. Finally, in late afternoon the surface winds were out of the SE. There was significant cloud cover until early afternoon, which may have contributed to the lack of a well defined land/sea breeze circulation.

The ship spent most of the night NE of the Isles of Shoals, slowly moving southward overnight while keeping the NE wind forward of the beam. At 6:00 AM local time the ship was on a SW to NE track about 2 miles off the coast. The track was about 10 nm long with the northern end just north of the entrance to Portsmouth Harbor. The ship moved back and forth along this track until approximately 3:30 PM local time characterizing the coastal meteorology and chemistry. A number of plumes that apparently originated from urban areas (Portsmouth/Kittery?) and point sources on the land and ships and small boats operating along the coast were observed on the track. Only minimal ozone formation was observed in these plumes, possibly due, at least in part, to the cloud cover in the area.

At 3:30pm ET the ship moved south and east of the Isles of Shoals to get in position to characterize the expected pollutant transport from the Boston area that was forecast to begin early Sunday morning.

For all plots, time is indicated in GMT. Eastern time is -5 hours.

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Location
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Temperature, Pressure
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Sea Surface Temperature, Relative Humidity
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True Wind Speed, Direction
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Ship Speed, Direction
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Relative Wind Speed, Direction

Textual information and data plots are for quicklook and overview purposes only.