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2002 LAPCOD Meeting
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TELEPHOS: A new surface drifter for coastal and lake studies
Vassilis Zervakis, Michalis Ktistakis, Dimitris Georgopoulos and Antonis Kantidakis
National Centre for Marine Research, Greece
zervakis@ncmr.gr(Abstract received 11/08/2002 for session C)
ABSTRACT
This work constitutes the presentation of a new surface drifter, designed for use in semi-enclosed seas, coastal areas and lakes. The booming growth of cellular phone market worldwide has brought large coastal areas under the coverage of GSM telephony. Not only coastal regions and lakes, but even semi-enclosed seas, like the Baltic, enjoy almost full coverage by cellular telephony. This enables the introduction of such technology in replacing satellite communication, resulting to significantly lower costs. Furthermore, the decentralization allowed by the use of such technology, enables the monitoring of drifters in real-time and data-analysis in near-real time, offering drifter methodologies to operational oceanography applications. Furthermore, the real-time monitoring and interactive, reprogrammable software, allow the easy tracking and recovery of drifters, thus lowering their cost by making them less expendable instruments. Our new design allows the alternate use of a drifter either as surface, Davis-type drifter, or as a surface float with a subsurface kite down to depths of 50 m. Finally, the software accompanying the drifters allows not only mission programming and drifter monitoring, but also considerable data analysis (Eulerian statistics, Lagrangian estimates of diffusivity, spectral analysis, etc). As the construction of the prototype drifters is under way, the software presentation of the data analysis part is based on data collected by WOCE drifters deployed by R.S.M.A.S. in the Aegean Sea in 2001-2002, in collaboration with the Hellenic National Centre for Marine Research.
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2002 LAPCOD Meeting, Key Largo, Florida, December 12-16, 2000