RAPID-MOCHA-WBTS Array at 26.5°N

node · earth · Subtropical North Atlantic — 26.5°N section

A trans-basin line of moored instruments across the Atlantic at 26.5°N, from the Bahamas to the African shelf, which has measured the overturning circulation continuously since April 2004. It is a collaboration of the UK National Oceanography Centre, the University of Miami and NOAA. The method is indirect and worth understanding: the array does not measure the overturning directly but sums the Florida Current transport from the submarine cable, the wind-driven Ekman transport from satellite winds, and the mid-ocean geostrophic transport inferred from density profiles at the boundaries. Twenty-plus years in, it remains the longest direct record of any overturning circulation anywhere.