Voyage Number
IN2025_V03
Voyage Dates
Voyage Location
Chief Scientist
Dr Ruhi Humphries
Institution
CSIRO
Voyage livestream
Watch our livestream from RV Investigator's 20-day research voyage into the Southern Ocean off Kennaook/Cape Grim.
Voyage summary
RV Investigator will undertake a research voyage out of Hobart to the Southern Ocean to conduct research to better predict and understand the influence of human activity on the global atmosphere.
This voyage will enable scientists to compare, for the first time, two global atmosphere monitoring stations: RV Investigator and Kennaook/Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station (CGBAPS). RV Investigator and Kennaook/Cape Grim Station are both significant infrastructure in the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) program. RV Investigator is the world’s first and only mobile station in GAW and Kennaook/Cape Grim Station is one of three premier global GAW stations.
Kennaook/Cape Grim in remote northwest Tasmania has some of the cleanest air on the planet. The suite of atmospheric systems on RV Investigator will be used to directly compare atmospheric composition measurements at Kennaook/Cape Grim with measurements far off the coast in the Southern Ocean.
The primary voyage objectives are: 1) conduct a site comparison between RV Investigator and Kennaook/Cape Grim Station, where both stations are sampling the same airmass in a variety of wind conditions, and 2) position the vessel up to 1,500 kilometres southwest of Kennaook/Cape Grim to conduct a baseline verification to determine how representative measurements at Kennaook/Cape Grim are of the wider Southern Ocean.
There are four other projects on this voyage:
- Southern Ocean Winter Cloud Interactions Processes – SOWCLIP (Dr Alain Protat, BOM): Deploy weather balloons to obtain data about cloud microphysical properties to improve weather modelling.
- Revealing offshore records of Cainozoic volcanism (Dr Jodie Foster, UTAS): Investigation of the morphology of the seafloor offshore from Kennaook/Cape Grim to examine the extension of volcanic deposits.
- Natural Iron Fertilisation of the Southern Ocean (Prof Andy Bowie, UTAS): Multi-voyage research project investigating the deposition of iron‐rich aerosols from Australia into surface ocean waters.
- Deployment of Argo floats (Dr Gabi Semolini Pilo, CSIRO): Deployment of one core and five biogeochemical (BGC) Argo floats in support of the International Argo Float Program.
This voyage has 23 science participants from 8 institutions, including two international universities, as well as 20 crew from MMA Offshore.
Voyage outcomes
Voyage outcomes will be published approximately 3-6 months after the completion of the voyage.
Voyage media
Underway systems on RV Investigator
Explore the systems used to continually collect atmospheric data while the vessel is underway.