Combining Uncrewed Oceanographic Systems for Observational Air-Sea Interaction Studies

Heat absorbed and released by the ocean is an important driver of the global climate. Coarse estimates of air-sea fluxes are fairly common, but high-resolution fluxes and observations are much less common. Thus, we demonstrate the use of uncrewed and autonomous vessels to investigate ocean heat content and fluxes with the atmosphere, attempting to determine the ocean mixed layer heat budget on a scale of days in a 10 km x 10 km region. This research took place east of Barbados in January and February 2020, as part of the wider Eurec4a campaign to investigate cloud and climate systems. Combined, these analyses lead us to a primarily observational determination of the local heat transfer processes. We discussed the potential of this observationally derived heat content in comparison to ERA5.