Remote-controlled trimaran Ocarina (Océan couplé à l'atmosphère : recherche instrumentée sur navire annexe / Ocean coupled to the atmosphere: instrumented research on an auxiliary ship).

The OCARINA platform (Ocean Coupled to the Atmosphere, Research on the Interface on the Annex Ship) is a surface naval drone specifically developed to measure turbulent and radiative exchanges at the ocean/atmosphere interface.

Designed and produced at LATMOS in 2009, the initial version of OCARINA has evolved through campaigns and collaborations with DT-INSU, ENSTA-Paris, Ifremer, LOCEAN, and IRPHE.

The onboard instruments are an inertial unit, a GPS, a sonic anemometer, a probe for measuring rising and falling radiative flows in the infrared and in visible wavelengths, a submerged probe of the CT type, and a meteorological station.

The level 2 data provided are:

• the location, speed, heading and route followed
• the height and significant period of waves longer than two meters
• the water temperature (SST) at a depth of 30 cm
• surface salinity (SSS)
• the meteorological variables (wind in modulus and direction, temperature, humidity and pressure) at one meter high.
• solar and infrared fluxes up and down
• turbulent bulk flows (u*, Hs and LE), and Monin-Obukhov's ratio (z/L)
• u* and Hsv (the turbulent buoyancy flux) estimated by the inertio dissipative method
• u* and Hsv estimated by covariance method