The UK team - Professor Ric Williams (University of Liverpool), Darren Rayner, Drs Pete Brown and Anna Katavouta (National Oceanography Centre).
In 2023, a University of Liverpool -led team travelled to the Florida Straits as part of a £4 million coollaborative research project to explore how the Gulf Stream affects the climate system through the transport of nutrients and carbon.
The team deployed scientific instruments and equipment to take samples and measurements from the Gulf Stream, the dominant current of the North Atlantic.
Two years later, they returned to the area as part of the project to collect three moorings, that had been tethered to the sea floor, holding sensors measuring temperature, salinity, oxygen, nutrients and carbon at depths from 400m to 700m.
Collecting part of the mooring - the orange buoy orientates itself into the current to avoid the strong flow blowing the mooring down,and holds the crucial sensors measuring the properties.
The data collected by these instruments will provide a unique view of how the properties carried by the Gulf Stream vary on a daily basis over 24 months.
This research aims to understand how this current is varying in time and the likely downstream effects on our climate and carbon cycle.
To provide a spatial context to the three moorings, the team also conducted 3 sections across the Gulf Stream, measuring the physical and biogeochemical properties carried across the current.
An underwater view of the instrument collecting water samples and properties across the Gulf Stream
The measurements reveal deep signals containing old waters that were last at the sea surface many decades ago and contain high concentrations of nutrients, and these waters may ultimately originate from the Southern Ocean. The Gulf Stream transfers these deep waters downstream over the North Atlantic, and so affect the climate and carbon system in subpolar latitudes off Europe.
Professor Ric Williams (above), the Liverpool lead for the project, said "This transport of deep properties by the Gulf Stream helps determine the nutrients and carbon properties of the high latitude North Atlantic, ultimately affecting how much carbon the ocean sequesters from the atmosphere".
The research team on this expedition involved a team of researchers: Professor Ric Williams from University of Liverpool, Dr Pete Brown leading a team from the National Oceanography Centre based at Southampton and Liverpool, and Drs Guillaume Novelli leading a team from the University of Miami.
The research was conducted on the research ship the Walton Smith, and this work is supported by a £4million grant from the UK Natural Environment Research Council and the US National Science Foundation.
Heading back to port with the equipment collected from the Florida Straits.
List of Photos that can be inserted into the above narrative.
Photo 1. The UK team on the Walton Smith off Miami consisting of Professor Ric Williams (University of Liverpool), Darren Rayner, Drs Pete Brown and Anna Katavouta (National Oceanography Centre).
Photo 2. Collecting part of the mooring from in the Florida Straits, the orange buoy orientates itself into the current to avoid the strong flow (reaching 2 metres a second) blowing the mooring down, and holds the crucial sensors measuring the properties.
Photo 3. An underwater view of the instrument collecting water samples and properties across the Gulf Stream. We repeated 3 sections across the Gulf Stream, made up of profiles from this instrument that emasures temperature, salinity, oxygen and nutrients, as well as takes water samples (in the grey tall bottles) at discrete depths.
Photo: The deck of the ship is covered by the equipment we had deployed over the last year.
Photo: View of the Walton Smith research ship.
Photo: Heading back to port with the equipment that we have collected from the Florida Straits.
Photo: Ric Williams reporting back from the Florida Straits
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Sunset at sea
Photo: Unlike in previous visits to the Florida Straits, the weather was very calm for this short research cruise, making it very easy to work on the ship, both moving heavy equipment on the ship and collecting samples.
The entire research team back at Miami.
