Going with the flow
Roger Revelle, Some Particulars:
Owner: Office of Naval Research, USN
Operator: Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Built: 9 December 1993, launched 20 April 1995
Propulsion: Twin 3,000 hp Diesel electric motors
Length: 277 ft (84.4 m)
Beam: 52 ft. (16 m)
Cruising Speed: 12 knots
Range: 15,000 nautical miles (28,000 km)
Endurance: 52 days
Dallas Murphy reports from the sea
[T]he North Atlantic Current (NAC), a sort of offshoot arm of the Gulf Stream itself. Twenty to 40 million cubic meters of warm, salty water deliver to the west-facing shores of Europe a moderate climate they don’t deserve, given their latitudes. For instance, the latitude of Bantry Bay, Ireland, is 51° North, where palm trees can survive, and farther north, much of the coast of Norway above the Arctic Circle remains ice-free year-round. (On the west side of the Atlantic, that latitude slices across the frigid coast of Labrador.) So here’s a clear-cut example of how the ocean, in collaboration with the west wind, strongly influences climate over a large swath of the Northern Hemisphere. And it’s only one example.
