From 18 November until 15 December 2021, four NIOZ colleagues are joining research expedition MSM104 "SIPA - Sinking Particles, their production, transfer and transformation" onboard Research Vessel Maria S. Merian, sailing from Emden (northern Germany) to the equatorial northeastern Atlantic Ocean and ending in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain).

The aim of the expedition is to study sinking particles from sea surface towards the seafloor. The particular aim of the four NIOZ colleagues is to service dust-collecting buoys Carmen (off Cape Blanc, Mauritania) and Laura as well as high-resolution sediment-trap mooring M1 (both south of Cape Verde Islands) which have been collecting many particles, including Saharan dust, since we deployed them during RV Pelagia expedition 64PE482 in February 2021. In addition, we will be collecting dust with various instruments.
In the blog below you can follow our whereabouts and adventures at sea.
A parallel blog for this expedition is being kept on the MARUM website.

Regular updates below this part, latest update on top:
________________________________________
15 December – the SIPA dreamteam
All good things come to an end, also this dusty research expedition. On behalf of the SIPA dreamteam (L2R: Eldo, Jan-Berend, Kristina, Daan, Melina, Michael, Götz, Jan Dirk, Joshua, Marco, Alek, Gerard, Hendrik, Eduardo, Karin, Bob, Leon, Aman) we thank Master Björn and his dreamteam of officers on the bridge, bosun Enno and his dreamteam on deck, Chief Engineer Sven and his dreamteam in the machine room and chef Matthias and his dreamteam in the pantry. We were spoiled with great food and comfort, a very pleasant working atmosphere and many present surprises from the ever-cheerful Sylvia. Many thanks and looking forward to the next time!

With that this blog is closed, many thanks for following and see at the next!

14 December – dust on satellite images
NASA offers daily satellite images on the Eosdis website with two overpasses every day; the Terra/MODIS overpass is in the morning and the Aqua/MODIS in the afternoon. These two images are also combined –to get rid of the black bars that are the result of the satellite’s orbit around the rotating earth— into a daily average but on the ‘raw’ images used for this animation, the Saharan dust plumes can be seen more clearly.

One can clearly see how during the period that we were in the area off Mauritania, dust plumes started to be blown across Cape Blanc onto the Atlantic Ocean on 28 November, and they hardly stopped since then; we have been truly lucky to witness so much dust in so many events!

The dust-collecting buoys offer the unique opportunity to calibrate these satellite images as they monitor and collect information not only on the meteorological conditions at sea but also on quantitative amounts of dust per m³ air. In addition, the new add-on to the buoys --the wet-dust collectors-- will give us information on how much Saharan dust is deposited on the ocean with rain. The synchronised collection of sediments by the submarine sediment traps will hopefully provide information about the marine environmental effects.