Measuring OCS from the ocean on the R/V Ron Brown: WACS
September 2012
Marine emissions are the dominant source of OCS to the atmosphere. But there is a lot of uncertainty about the global distributions of these emissions.
We calculated the air-flux of OCS by eddy covariance by combining high resolution OCS mixing ratio measurements with motion corrected wind measurements. I ran a QCL instrument to measure fluxes of carbonyl sulfide (OCS) from the jackstaff on the bow of the Ron Brown. Thanks to Ludovic Bariteau, Chris Fairall and Sergio Pezoa at NOAA Boulder, we also ran a sonic anemometer and motion package to determine the true winds impacting the jackstaff.
Scott Herndon and Mark Zahniser (Aerodyne), Martin Graus (NOAA) and Michael Long (Harvard) were all a great help in installing the instrument and sampling lines during the installation period.
The cruise travelled from the productive waters off the coast of Massachusetts down to the clear blue waters of Bermuda.
