Hello fellow paddlers, Someone posted me a question about the reported sea surface temps from Arthur Hebert. I contacted Jenifer Clark who is maintaining the charts and surface info on Hebert's web site. Jenifer is a professional satellite oceanographer with 26 years experience as NOAA's Gulf Stream expert (Gulf of Mexico). Besides responding about the surface temps reported, Jenifer Clark also said that the report of Hebert being lost as sea was false and most likely came from an erroneous Mexican report. Hebert had constant communication with his support team. She also said Hebert is using a GPS and ARGOS trasmitter (was not sure if he carries an EPIRB, but thinks so). A fellow by the name of Andy McAllister is in charge of communications and was able to fly over Arthur and talk with him. Jenifer says Arthur is fine except for some sores on his rear end... ouch 8-} The website is http://homepages.gs.net/hebert/ The Gulf of Mexico area has experienced record-breaking heat this May. Because of warmer waters resulting from El Nino, some forecasters are warning of more severe hurricanes and predicting that more hurricanes will be forming at lower latitudes (like Florida). See http://www.storm97.com/reports/053198season.html This is Jenifer Clark's response about the sea surface temps recorded by Arthur Hebert: > From gulfstrm_at_erols.com Tue Jun 2 11:07 PDT 1998 > Date: Tue, 02 Jun 1998 14:04:47 -0400 > Subject: Re: Authur Hebert's journey > > Jackie, > Thanks for the email. Arthur's trip has been fun to watch and be a part > of. I gave him the waypoints such that he could take advantage of > favorable currents and avoid unfavorable ones. He was in a large warm > eddy on its western side flowing toward the North for quite a while. > His speed increased signigicantly during that time. He has recently > been pushed to the East by the northern part of this same eddy and it > has been difficult to overcome. > As far as the temperature discrepancy, I think Arthur is experiencing > surface diurnal heating. You will notice that his temps vary a lot over > a 24 hour period. The buoys measure temps at slightly below the surface > and Arthur's temp probe is probably not that deep. Or maybe his > thermometer is not well calibrated. I am looking forward to talking > with him when he returns. (I am sure that his wife and daughters are > REALLY looking forward to talking with him again!) Jenifer Clark *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
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