TERIFIC Ocean Glider Deployments in the Labrador Sea

As part of the TERIFIC (Targeted Experiment to Reconcile Increased Freshwater with Increased Convection) project funded by the European Research Council, two Kongsberg Seagliders (sg602 and sg638) were deployed offshore of Qaqortoq, southwest of Greenland, in December 2019 from the 30-m research vessel Adolf Jensen. Both gliders were retrieved in Trinity Bay on the Labrador coast of Canada in May 2020 from a fishing boat. Glider sg602 had a standard fairing and a standard hardware; glider sg638 had an ogive fairing and was equipped with a science controller. Unpumped CTDs (Conductivity, Temperature, and Depth), referred to as CT sails and provided by Sea-Bird Electronics (Bellevue, WA) were mounted on both Seagliders with a sampling frequency of 0.1 Hz. An Aanderaa oxygen optode was also fixed on both gliders but only sg638 returned measurements of dissolved oxygen concentration. Both gliders were equipped with WETLabs (Western Environmental Technologies Laboratories) BBFL2 ECO Puck that measures chlorophyll, colored dissolved organic matter and optical backscatter (700 nm). Initial processing with the University of Washington’s basestation corrects for the thermal-inertia effect of the CT sail. Both gliders were processed with the GliderTools toolbox (Gregor et al., 2019) to determine adjusted temperature and salinity variables.