The National Oceanography Centre’s (NOC) Royal Research Ship Discovery left Southampton, on 25 March 2021, for an expedition to the Porcupine Abyssal Plain Sustained Observatory (PAP-SO).
The RRS Discovery set sail today on its second scientific research expedition since the coronavirus pandemic put the research ship programme temporarily on hold.
Last week a NOC Ocean Observatory in the North-East Atlantic was torn from its mooring by high winds and waves associated with the remnants of hurricane Epsilon that struck the UK a few days later.
On Friday 14 April the RRS Discovery will leave Southampton for a research expedition to the Porcupine Abyssal Plain sustained ocean observatory (PAP-SO) in the Northeast Atlantic.
European scientists are joining forces to better understand oceanic change, by coordinating ocean data acquisition, analysis and response on scales ranging from the provincial to the global.
NOC scientist, Dr Henry Ruhl, is leading an expedition to the Porcupine Abyssal Plain, some 300 miles southwest of Lands End. He will be looking at how the shape of deep ocean floor and climate influence deep sea ecology, and he intends to do this by making a very large photographic map of the seafloor – 10km by 10km – an area roughly the size of Southampton.
In May 2010, the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) joins forces with the UK Met Office to enhance ocean monitoring at the Porcupine Abyssal Plain sustained observatory (PAP-SO), the longest multidisciplinary open-ocean time-series observatory in Europe. This collaboration should both advance scientific understanding of the ocean and improve climate prediction.
