Research aims of SOLAS Cruise Discovery 313:
Our understanding of air-sea gas exchange has advanced rapidly over the past decade but we remain unable to adequately parameterise fundamental controlling processes.  For some gases, such as CO₂, this constitutes the dominating uncertainty in global budgeting.

The goal DOGEE-SOLAS therefore, is to reduce the uncertainty by identifying and evaluating these major controlling processes.  Project outputs will enable more accurate parameterizations of gas exchange and facilitate scaling across a range of gases of interest.  Two dedicated cruises will be carried out in the north Atlantic to examine the roles of wind speed, sea state, surface slicks and other sea surface turbulence-related phenomena.  Both direct and indirect gas flux measurements will be made using well-established and new methods, in both water and air.

The scientific objectives of the cruise are:

• Dual-tracer (³He and SF₆) releases in the north Atlantic. One release will involve two patches in close proximity; one labelled with N-acetyl-D-glucosamine to mimic the role of surface organic slicks in gas transfer.
• To record (by video) and measure (by capacitance wave wires) whitecap coverage and wave breaking, and to develop an improved parameterisation.
• To quantify acoustically, bubble populations produced by breaking waves.
• To measure wind speed, air temperature and humidity, sea surface temperature.  IR surface temperature, downwelling long- and short-wave radiation and air pressure.
• To measure air-sea fluxes of CO₂, sensible heat, latent heat and momentum (EC and inertial dissipation) with an automated sensor array.
• To measure DMS fluxes (by GF and REA) and scale theme to other gases based on diffusivity.
• To quantify flow distortion biases in the data using Computation Fluid Dynamics.
• To deploy a sampling system for collecting sea surface microlayer samples.