RRS James Cook Cruise JC192, 9-28 March 2020 RAPID cruise report for Cruise JC192

The purpose of RRS James Cook cruise JC192 was to refurbish the RAPID 26°N array of moorings that span the Atlantic from the Bahamas to the Canary Islands. The cruise started in Santa Cruz de Tenerife on Monday 9th March 2020 and ended on Saturday 28th November at Southampton, UK. The moorings are part of a purposeful Atlantic wide array that observes the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and the associated heat and freshwater transports. The RAPID-MOCHA-WBTS array is a joint UK- US programme. During JC192 moorings were serviced at sites: EBH4, EBH4L, EBH3, EBH2, EBH1, EBH1L, EBHi, EB1, EB1L. Sites with suffix ‘L’ denote landers fitted with bottom pressure recorders. Two Pressure Inverted Echo Sounder (PIES) landers were deployed for NOAA AOML. Moorings were equipped with instruments to measure temperature, conductivity and pressure, and a number of moorings were also equipped with current meters and/or oxygen sensors. The ABC Fluxes project extends the measurements on the RAPID 26°N array to include biological and chemical measurements. CTD stations were conducted throughout the cruise for purposes of providing pre- and post- deployment calibrations for mooring instrumentation (including oxygen and carbonate chemistry sampling) and for testing mooring releases prior to deployment. Shipboard underway measurements were systematically logged, processed and calibrated, including: surface meteorology, 5m depth sea temperatures and salinities, water depth, and navigation. Water velocity profiles from 15 m to approximately 800 m depth were obtained using two vessel mounted Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (one 75 kHz and one 150 kHz).