CA 14-15 XXX Ita. Esp. New Zeland

XBT operations started a few hours after the departure from the harbor of Lyttelton (NZ) on 01/02/2015 at 47°59'S/166° 45'E and ended on 01/10/2015 at 73°13'S 173°18'E.
Activities were carried on from ship Korean Araon. The release of 74 probes XBT occurred along the route illustrated in Figure 1, and it allowed to realize the temperature section at the spatial resolution of about 10 Nm also thanks to the merging of XBT data with XCTD profiles.

Figure 1 Map of XBT launches in the period 02-10/01/2015(left) and temperature section relative to the layer 0-800m, from New Zealand to Antarctica (right)

Italian studies on XBT data across the ACC started in 1994 and were carried on as part of several projects funded by PNRA, which have now a significant climatological significance both for the long period covering both the possible inter-connections with phenomena on a planetary scale. The measures are part of the XBT observations of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current solicited and regulated by the SOOS.