IOOS Glider - Ocean Observatories Initiative - Coastal Pioneer NES - Coastal Glider 380 Deployed on 2016-10-11

The Continental Shelf-Slope area off the New England coast is a highly productive area and one that is located at a dynamic intersection where ocean currents meet in weather-like fronts, and where nutrients, pollutants, and other properties are exchanged between the coast and the deep ocean. Data from the inshore, shelf area helps to examine exchanges between the shelf and slope and the shelf ecosystem, as well as provide broader insight into the issues of air-sea gas exchange, including Carbon Dioxide.

In order to provide synoptic, multi-scale observations of the outer continental shelf, shelf break region, and continental slope, the moored portion of the Pioneer Array is supplemented by six Coastal Gliders. The role of the Coastal Gliders is to monitor the mesoscale field of the slope sea and outer shelf, resolving rings, eddies and meanders from the Gulf Stream as they impinge on the shelf break front. The AUVs are the primary tools for resolving cross- and along-front eddy fluxes due to frontal instabilities, wind forcing, and mesoscale variability.