Desde hoy lunes 20 y hasta el próximo viernes 24 de Febrero se celebra en Salt Lake City (Utah. USA) una nueva edición del congreso internacional Ocean Sciences Meeting 2012. Los más de  cuatro mil asistentes contarán en la presente edición con un amplísimo y interesante programa de trabajos científicos repartidos en ponencias orales y sesiones de posters, lo que convierte al evento en uno de los mas importantes del ámbito científico ligado al medio marino a nivel internacional.

En esta ocasión, la Plataforma Oceánica de Canarias -PLOCAN- ha presentado dos trabajos relativos a vehículos submarinos (gliders) dentro del programa específico "Development of a Global Ocean Biogeochemical Observing System Based on Profiling Floats and Gliders". Concretamente:

1.- C. Barrera, M. J. Rueda, R. Morán, R. Santana, A. Lorenzo, D. Vega, L. Cardona, A. de Manzanos and O. Llinas. "ESTOC SITE: IMPROVING ITS PERMANENT TIME-SERIES OCEAN OBSERVING PROGRAM WITH UNDERWATER GLIDERS".
In-situ ocean observations have been traditionally carried out through oceanographic ships, VOS, moorings, drifters and floats mainly. All of them are able to sample water column biogeochemical parameters (coastal and off-shore areas) but not always within the right spatial-temporal resolution, operational and cost-effective required ratio. Nowadays, cutting-edge technology tools allows to have autonomous and permanent ocean sites furnished with multidisciplinary observing platforms and sensors, sampling and providing product-information to the end-users in real time mode. The European Station for Time-series in the OCean -ESTOC-, as OCEANSite's network member and consolidate site reference in the Eastern Central Atlantic for more than fifteen years of multidisciplinary time-series background, has recently improved its biogeochemical sampling program with the three main underwater gliders technology available. This new approach is the result of a collaborative effort between the Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands -PLOCAN- and the Marine Sciences Institute of Canary Islands (ICCM) where PLOCAN is in charge to provide all the technical and operational logistics required by the end users for their scientific aims, managed by ICCM through its Oceanography's Department.
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2.- D. Vega-Moreno,  M. Gomez, R. Santana, L. Cardona, C. Barrera,  M.J. Rueda, M. and O. Llinas. "LOOKING THE BEST ROUTE FOR A THERMAL GLIDER IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC".
Gliders, together with other systems as ARGO buoys, have mean a great improvement to the ocean presence due to the high resolution data obtained during a relative long time periods with some level of manoeuvrability and position control by reprogrammable routes. Their operability can vary between some weeks to several months depending on the type of sensors installed, they can record physical and biogeochemical parameters during dives. Their autonomy can be improved with the use of renewable energy in the glider, this is the case of the thermal glider (Slocum model, Teledyne Webb Research). This is a simple concept of a heat engine which provides the buoyancy changing propulsion energy to drive the engine itself between the source and sink the heat at a useful speed. Thermal energy was chosen since it is reliably and predictably available at all hours, it can be harvested while underway, and it exploits a reasonably simple engine design. Thermal propulsion has limitations; the most important is that the temperature gradient is not available globally. For studying the factor of temperature gradient in the North Atlantic it was done a study using ARGO data to evaluate the best route that a thermal glider must take between North America and Canary Islands (Spain).
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