Atmospheric analysis

A weekly update describing soil moisture patterns across the country to show where dry to extremely dry conditions are occurring or imminent. Regions experiencing significant soil moisture deficits are deemed “hotspots”. Persistent hotspot regions have the potential to develop into drought.

Tangaroa continues to map the area while deploying instruments to collect samples and capture images of the seafloor.

We started the day by examining the seafloor towards the main island of Tongatapu. As we got closer, the images from the seafloor clearly showed a layer of ash several centimetres thick overlaying the white bedrock of the main Tongan islands.

Our highest elevation site at 2128 m, Mt Potts is also one our sites very exposed to wind.

The Upper Rakaia SIN site is located at 1752 m on a north facing slope in the Jollie Range. Records start in 2010.

The Albert Burn SIN site is located at 1280 m in the upper Albert Burn valley, east of Mt Aspiring/Tititea. Records start in 2012.

The Ivory Glacier SIN site is located at 1390 m next to Ivory Lake, west of the main divide of the Southern Alps/ Kā Tiritiri Te Moana.

Identifying unknown organisms, forecasting the weather and understanding the potential impacts of a tsunami. These are all possibilities opened up by a new website that has been built to provide easy access to an enormous range of environmental research data.

Over the last 24 hours, we have gone from the deep seafloor at 2,300 m to the shallow slopes of the island of Tongatapu, located to the south-east of the volcano.

Tangaroa has just arrived north of the volcano to deploy the glider. The launch was successful and, after some shallow test dives, the instrument was sent on its first transect.

We have sampled 11 stations today, with different pieces of equipment, starting with rock dredges on a ridge close to Hunga Ha’apai. The samples taken returned a trove of rock specimens that got the geologist onboard excited.

We sampled along an erosion channel that was mapped previously in 2016, showing this channel has deepened since then.