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Posts Tagged ‘NASA S’COOL’

Crew Log 180 – Science Along the Magellan Strait

Jan 30th, 2010
by Herb McCormick.
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Open the above photos in a full-screen slideshow in Flickr

January 30, 2010 – Isla Carlos III, Chile
By Dr. Ned Cabot with an introduction by Herb McCormick

On Saturday, winding their way through the labyrinth of Chilean canals, the crew of Ocean Watch set sail for the first time in the famed Straits of Magellan, so named for the intrepid Portuguese navigator whose expedition for the riches of the Far East led to the first circumnavigation of the planet. By day’s end, they were anchored in a protected enclave called Bahia Mussel on Isla Carlos III, some eighty miles east of the mouth of the Strait.

Since leaving the Falkland Islands, the regular crew has enjoyed the expertise of one of the most experienced offshore sailors to join the expedition since leaving Seattle. Dr. Ned Cabot is a board member of Sailors for the Sea, and he is also the skipper of the J/46, Cielita, which he’s sailed across the Atlantic, to Newfoundland and Greenland, and as far north as 80º N. As well as crewing aboard Ocean Watch, Ned has also taken charge of the scientific duties for this leg of the voyage. Today he takes the helm of the crew log to report on what he’s learned thus far.

A Report from Sailors for the Sea Board Member Dr. Ned Cabot

I should start by pointing out that I am only a pseudo-scientist. I am a surgeon by training with only a very limited knowledge of oceanography and meteorology and geology and all that sort of thing. I know a lot about human biology, but I am not trained in environmental science. Having said that, however, I am an experienced sailor and an active conservationist, and I serve on the Board of Directors of Sailors for the Sea, an environmental education organization concerned about the health of our oceans and a sponsoring organization of the Around the Americas Project. As such, I have signed on for one three-week leg of the journey as a crewmember aboard Ocean Watch and as a visiting scientist to help with the collection of data that is part of our mission as the ship circumnavigates both American continents.

One of my duties is to record cloud observations twice a day. These observations are timed to coincide with the passage overhead of NASA CERES Terra and Aqua satellites that take pictures from above the clouds covering the Earth as they orbit our planet. We are given the exact time that each satellite will pass overhead, and we record information about the clouds as they appear from below. This information is then relayed to the NASA S’COOL Program so they can compare what the satellites see with what we see down here from the ocean. We also record and report information about air temperature, relative humidity, and barometric pressure, as well as our exact location by GPS at the time of each observation.

When we are stationary, such as when we are at anchor, we are also interested in recording sounds in the ocean with an acoustical device called a hydrophone. And we are trying to examine particulates in the atmosphere by means of a Microtops Sunphotometer.

And there is a lot of other scientific gear on our boat, such as the SeaKeepers system that continuously takes water samples for analysis, and a special camera that takes thousands of pictures a day in a 360 degree circle around the boat. It’s pretty neat stuff. The data we are collecting is being sent to the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington and various other institutions for analysis and will eventually contribute to research to be published in scientific papers.

Of course, I’ve also been making some observations of my own. We are presently at the very bottom of South America. We sailed around Cape Horn at the southern tip of the continent, and now we are sailing up the Beagle Channel, named for the boat that Charles Darwin was aboard when he formulated his famous theory of evolution. This is an incredibly beautiful place, with high mountains rising out of the sea and huge glaciers tumbling down and breaking off. It appears that many of the glaciers are melting faster than they are growing, so they are receding and their melt will likely contribute to the rise of the oceans.

The weather down here is pretty severe, even in the summer, which in the southern hemisphere occurs the same months as our winter up north. Cape Horn is at 56 degrees south latitude, which is about equivalent to the middle of Labrador and the middle of  British Columbia in Canada up north. But down here the weather is generally more severe than at the same latitudes in the north because of the impact of the Southern Ocean that circles the globe to the north of Antarctica, and the only place on earth where land masses or continents do not slow down the wind, and is known for its high winds and big waves.

So the trees down here are generally very small and often nonexistent. The winds are very strong, and the weather changes very rapidly. The water is very cold, around 40 degrees Fahrenheit, so the air is usually pretty cold too, sometimes just above freezing even in the summer. We’ve actually experienced several snow flurries, usually followed by a brief hailstorm.

And the geology of this region is fascinating. I wish I knew more about it. There is a ridge of high mountains that runs along much of the west side of South America. Further north this mountain range is known as the Andes. Down here in Chile it is known as the Cordillera. On its west side, where we are, the mountains attract a lot of moisture from the winds coming off the Pacific Ocean. This causes a lot of precipitation on this side of the mountain range in the form of rain and snow. And many thousands of years of snow have given rise to the glaciers, huge rivers of slow-moving ice that pour down the mountain valleys and sometimes reach the sea, sometimes creating icebergs and often creating spectacular waterfalls. You can see how the glaciers have carved out the valleys, scraping the sides and leaving behind huge ridges of gravel and stones called moraines. They are really something to behold. And where the glaciers have receded, which they are doing at an alarming rate due to global warming, they leave behind what is called a terminal moraine. When approaching a glacier in our boat, these terminal moraines can pose a real threat because they may be under the surface of the water, with deep water on either side but a shallow bar that might cause our boat to go aground (hit bottom).

In addition, we have been making our own observations concerning the flora and fauna of this region. On numerous occasions we’ve had Peale’s dolphins jumping clean out of the water nearby and swimming next to the boat in our bow wake. And we’ve sailed through a pod of humpback whales, including one of their babies, feeding near the surface – not to mention a number of South American fur seals that often appear quite close to the boat.

There are lots of sea birds to identify. We’ve seen Magallenic cormorants, several pairs of kelp geese, Turkey vultures, giant southern petrels, Magallenic penguins, black browed albatross, and one royal albatross, with a wing span of some 350 cm (over 11 feet!). Hiking ashore, we’ve identified a number of trees and plants, such as the evergreen beech, the firebush, and the holly-leafed barberry. We’ve also been learning some about the native tribes that used to inhabit these islands, such as the Yamana, also known as Yahgan, who are now almost entirely extinct. We were privileged to visit a very special place in the woods called Ukika where the descendents of the Yahgans have hung woodcarvings from the trees that represent the spirits of their deceased ancestors.

So science is an important component of this Around the Americas Project. Along with our other sponsoring organization, the Pacific Science Center, we want to call attention to some of the problems facing our oceans and how we all might help to make them healthier. We are thinking of the Americas as one giant island, populated by many different peoples but surrounded by ocean: the Arctic Ocean in the north, the Atlantic Ocean on the east, the Southern Ocean in the south, and the Pacific Ocean in the west. We must remember that more than two thirds of the Earth’s surface is covered with ocean, and the oceans control our climate and affect our lives on land in a whole host of ways.

So our oceans play a critical environmental role and must be better understood. And they must be protected from pollution and from being over fished and from acidification due to the absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Mankind can and does have a major impact on our oceans. We must make ourselves better stewards of the ocean environment.

So that’s why Ocean Watch, and all those involved with this Around the Americas Project, both on the ship and on shore, have undertaken this exciting scientific and historic voyage. We are trying to make a difference.

-Ned Cabot, M.D. with an introduction by Herb McCormick and photographs by David Thoreson

*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

*To add a comment to this story click on the comment link below the post title. Please direct your messages for the crew to crew@aroundtheamericas.org instead of submitting them here. Thanks for following the Around the Americas Expedition.

Crew Log 165 – Dust and Coccolithophores

Jan 9th, 2010
by Herb McCormick.
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January 9, 2010 – At Sea, 48º 57’S, 057º 51’W
By Herb McCormick

Herb's HeadshotLate this morning, as Ocean Watch continued to gobble up the miles toward our next port of call – Port Stanley, Falkland Islands – at a prodigious rate of speed, my watch mate, Dave Logan, tilted his nose toward the sky and said, “I smell dirt.” It looked like fun: I tried it too. No, I couldn’t catch a whiff of anything (and have my doubts about Logan), but the sky did have a haze of sorts that we hadn’t detected earlier on this mostly glorious run from Mar del Plata, Argentina. Logan dove below to grab an instrument we have aboard called a Microtops Sun Photometer. We’d heard that the after effects of a dust storm in Patagonia might be drifting our way, and on behalf of scientists a half a world away, we were poised to help discover if the rumor was true.

The Around the Americas expedition has always aimed to be a voyage of discovery, and a large part of that mission has been to carry forth not only scientists themselves, but also recording instruments and data-collection tools to help other scientists conduct research and experiments from their landlocked labs and classrooms in institutions across the United States. In fact, in several different iterations, it happens onboard ever day. But today, as Ocean Watch closed to within a day of the Falklands, a couple of interesting things were going on that helps cast a light on how our offshore journeys aid shore-side science.

Yesterday, oceanographer Michael Reynolds – our longest standing onboard scientist, currently taking a break to work back home in Seattle – forwarded an email from a NASA scientist, Dr. Santiago Gasso, who specializes in atmospheric aerosols and is based in Greenbelt, Maryland. Here’s a portion of Dr. Grasso’s note:

“I’ve been in contact with you before regarding my interest in dust storms in Argentina and how they advect to the ocean. So, I want to let you know that a moderate dust storm is occurring right now between the cities of Bahia Blanca and Viedma (41º S)…and there is also dust activity in the coastal city of Comodor Rivadavia (46º S). There is strong wind from the W too.

“The dust cloud should advect SE towards the general area where you are located. Since I know you have a Microtops sun photometer, you may be aware of probably increases in aerosol optical depth in the next 24-48 hours. I do not expect you to see much dust (with the) naked eye; if you do I would appreciate if you could take some photographs. I heard from local fishermen that they have seen abundant dust deposited over the water, so…proof of it would be very helpful. It would greatly help to compare with the satellite.

“Also, I’ve been watching the area from space every day and right N of the Malvinas (Falkland) Islands, there is a huge bloom of coccolithophores and it would be great if you describe it and maybe take some pictures.”

Okay, a few things are going on here. Let’s start with the aerosols and dust.

A story from www.sciencemag.org describes succinctly what we mean by aerosols: “Human activities are releasing tiny particles (aerosols) into the stratosphere. These human-made aerosols enhance scattering and absorption of solar radiation. They also produce brighter clouds that are less efficient at releasing precipitation.

“These in turn lead to large reductions in the amount of solar irradiance reaching Earth’s surface, a corresponding increase in solar heating of the atmosphere, changes in the atmospheric temperature structure, suppression of rainfall, and less efficient removal of pollutants. These aerosol effects can lead to a weaker hydrological cycle, which connects directly to availability and quality of fresh water, a major environmental issue of the 21st century.”

Dr. Gasso has specialized in dust observation in the Patagonia region and the study of the long-range transport from there into the Southern Ocean and Antarctica. “Detection of dust in this area is very difficult because dust tends to be mixed with clouds and the satellite algorithms get confused in such scenes and dust detection in this area is poorly characterized,” he writes. Readings from devices like the Sun Photometer, then, can be highly useful.

Both photographer David Thoreson and Logan spent the morning recording data. The unit itself is tricky to master, particularly on the rolling deck of a sailboat. The very general idea is to point the device skyward and pinpoint the sun in the bulls-eye of the target; it’s not unlike the old hand game where you roll little stainless-steel balls into divots in a plastic-encased toy. As Logan squinted and gave the photometer a little body English, I mentioned that kids weaned on PlayStation might be pretty good at it.

“The skills gained in video-gamesmanship could certainly apply to this scientific instrument,” he said. I was sorry I’d brought it up.

While Logan shot the sun, our current onboard scientist, Dr. Warren Buck, took cloud observations and photographs for our ongoing NASA S’COOL program. Meanwhile, our 360º Ladybug camera, erected on the aft antenna arch, continued to collect and download the tens of thousands of images it records every day.

“This might be one of the really key times for the Ladybug,” noted Michael Reynolds. And that brings us to the cocolitophore bloom.

We’d been noticing as we’ve traveled south that the water’s color has been changing constantly, and dramatically, and today was a beautiful greenish blue. We’ve also seen occasional milky patches, and the bird sightings have been off the charts. We’ve also been noting some very strange surface-water readings on our fishfinder/depthsounder. Do any or all of the above have anything to do with this algae bloom? Frankly, we’re not sure. We’ve just sent Dr. Reynolds a long list of questions of our own. But here’s what we do know, courtesy of an article sent along by the good doctor:

“Coccolithophores are single-celled algae (plankton) distinguished by special calcium carbonate plates (or scales) of uncertain function. They’re almost exclusively marine and are found globally in large numbers throughout the oceanic surface waters, the euphotic (good sunlight) zone of the ocean.”

As plants, they need sunlight for photosynthesis, and thus live near the surface.

“Coccolithophores have long been thought to respond to increased ocean acidity, caused by increasing CO2 levels, by becoming less calcified,” the article continues. “Scientists were recently surprised to learn that in fact the opposite can happen in at least some circumstances, with the model species E. huxleyi becoming 40% heavier and more abundant in waters of CO2 concentration.”

See the attached NASA image showing the common locations of coccolithophore blooms.

Ocean acidification is clearly a major threat to our seas, and it appears coccolithophores may be an important link in our chain of knowledge. The ongoing education of the crew of Ocean Watch, obviously, continues. We’ve certainly learned a lot on our travels Around the Americas. Along the way, we’ve been honored and privileged to perhaps help our partners in science learn a few things, too.

- Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

Cloud Observations Aboard Ocean Watch for the NASA S’COOL Program

Dec 27th, 2009
by Dr. Michael Reynolds.
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December 27, 2009
By Dr. Michael Reynolds

Michael Reynolds, Ph.D.The report below was co-written by Dr. Lin Chambers, Director of the NASA CERES S’COOL Project. For more information on the S’COOL project see the links listed below.

Clouds. Every person living on Earth has seen them. We all know that they bring us rain, snow, shadows, interesting shapes. However, clouds play a crucial role in the Earth climate system. Since we have had the vantage point of looking at Earth from space, we know that about half of the planet is always cloud-covered – in beautiful, shifting patterns. Besides bringing weather, these clouds play an important role in the Earth’s energy budget. They affect the amount of sunlight that reaches the Earth’s surface, and the amount of heat that escapes back to space.

Albedo. Sunlight is reflected by white (or light colored) materials and is absorbed by dark colored materials. Clouds reflect sunlight back to space and in so doing they help cool our climate. Without clouds, the temperature of the Earth would increase substantially as more of the Sun’s energy would reach the surface. The fraction of sunlight reflected back to space is called albedo. Both clouds and snow contribute to albedo but clouds are the main contributor. Today about 28% of the total energy from the sun is reflected to space.

Anvil Cloud
Fig. 1. A photograph taken at sunset as Ocean Watch makes its way south to the doldrums (described in the science report on the Brazil Current). The convergence creates towering Cumulus clouds that precipitate and grow to the top of the atmosphere. This photo shows the complexity of cloud observations. We see a towering Cumulonimbus anvil cloud that grows from near the surface up to several thousand meters. Winds at altitude sweep the top of the cloud away as it grows to make the anvil shape. Along the horizon are low Cumulus clouds. Above the Cumulus is a mixture of mid-level, Alto Stratus, and high, Cirrus clouds. Each cloud type has a different effect on the global energy budget so a measure of cloud fraction for each type is a critical.

High clouds and low clouds. As scientists have delved into the details of studying clouds, they have learned that the picture is not simple. Depending on what type, or level of clouds is present, clouds can actually have opposite effects on energy flows. High, thin clouds (i.e., the wispy-looking cirrus) actually have a warming effect on the Earth: they let in sunlight but do not allow heat to escape. Low, thick clouds (i.e., fluffy-looking cumulus or featureless stratus) have a cooling effect: they reflect the Sun’s light back to space, but also allow heat to escape from their relatively warm cloud tops. Currently scientists are delving even deeper into the details of clouds, and how they may respond to changes in the environment. This requires lots of information, both from space and from the ground.

Cloud observations from space. Our understanding of the physics of clouds has been highlighted as a key uncertainty in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Understanding this part of the Earth system is one of NASA’s highest priority scientific research areas. NASA studies clouds from space with a special instrument called the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES). There are CERES instruments currently on three Earth observing spacecraft: TRMM (launched in 1997), Terra (launched in December 1999), and Aqua (launched in 2002). The instruments on Terra and Aqua are still operating at this time, with Terra holding a 10th anniversary celebration in December. Both Terra and Aqua overfly essentially the entire Earth every day. Using measurements obtained by the CERES instrument, scientists seek to gain a better understanding of the role of clouds and the energy cycle in global climate change. CERES provides high accuracy measurements of reflected sunlight and heat energy leaving the Earth. The team then uses other instruments on Terra and Aqua to identify the cloud conditions associated with those measurements. Ground observations of clouds are an important component of the CERES program. Observations made from Earth provide “ground truth” validation of the satellite measurements. Quality assurance grows with more ground truth observations.

/files/2.nasa_cloud_image.jpg
Fig. 2. An example of a cloud image from above the Arctic Circle. The far north is dominated by vast shields of low Cumulus Stratus, and also challenges the satellite with bright snow and ice often covering the surface. In this situation the ground observer cannot see higher cloud layers, but can trivially distinguish clouds from snow or sea ice. Observations from space and the ground provide complementary information.

S’COOL. The Students’ Cloud Observations On-Line (S’COOL) project began in 1997 to collect surface observer reports of cloud conditions from widely distributed K-12 schools for comparison to the space-based measurements. S’COOL is administered from the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. S’COOL observations are used as a source of “ground truth” to assist in the validation of the cloud identification from space.

Ocean Watch Observations. The voyage of Ocean Watch is adding substantially to the S’COOL database by contributing observations from interesting places around the American continents where students don’t normally go. Ocean Watch is reporting observations through the S’COOL Rover component, launched for the 12th anniversary of the project in early 2009. In contrast to the main S’COOL Project, which collects cloud observation reports from fixed sites (i.e., schools), the Rover aspect allows people or groups anywhere in the world to obtain satellite overpass schedules and submit reports. With a moving platform such as Ocean Watch – and one with limited connectivity to the internet at that! — predicting the satellite overpass times is somewhat of a challenge, but the crew has worked out a system and done quite well. A large number of their observation reports have been matched to satellite data, which requires observing within +/- 15 minutes of the time that the satellite passes over the sailboat position. This tight time-matching is required because clouds can change substantially in short time periods, and we want to be sure that we are comparing ‘apples to apples’ and getting as much information as possible to compare to the satellite.

S'COOL Report
Fig 3. Screenshot from S’COOL Rover website showing the comparison between the observation report from the Ocean Watch crew and the corresponding satellite retrieval of cloud information for that time and location. This comparison corresponds to the satellite image in Fig. 2. This and other Ocean Watch reports are accessible from the S’COOL Rover database (see link below).

Results from the S’COOL program. Since the S’COOL Project began, here are some of the things we’ve learned:
1) The satellite is often not able to detect small amounts of thin cirrus cloud, which are easily seen from the ground. This is because the satellite has limited spatial resolution from its location ~700 km above the surface, and also because of the challenge of detecting thin clouds against the variable background of the Earth surface. An observer on the surface, in contrast, is looking for clouds against a fairly uniform background: the blue sky.
2) Sometimes clouds at one level are obscured by clouds at other layers. For instance, ground observers provide important complementary information about the lower layers of clouds, while the satellite instruments can view the uppermost layer. Newer, remote sensing instruments, such as CALIPSO or CloudSat, now provide vertical profiles of cloud layers all the way to the surface. These instruments are considered ‘active’ sensors, as they create their own source of illumination using lasers or radar, but they can only profile a thin strip of clouds immediately under the satellite track.
3) There are indications that the satellite algorithms are still sometimes confused by the presence of snow or ice on the surface, despite the best efforts of the CERES team to correctly separate clouds from snow. Since both are cold, bright surfaces, this is a big challenge for satellite observations. It is no challenge at all to a student standing on snowy ground to see even small wisps of cloud in the sky. We continue to seek data from snowy or icy parts of the world to better understand when and where this is or is not a problem.
4) Taken overall, the cloud coverage reported by students and other observers is in good agreement with the cloud coverage measured from the satellite instruments.

Conclusion. Studies continue on these and other aspects of comparisons between surface and satellite-based observations. We plan a focused study on the complete set of Ocean Watch reports to determine whether we can learn any new things from a number of previously unobserved areas along the route of the Around the Americas voyage. The entire database of reports since January 1997 is also accessible on the S’COOL website for anyone who might be interested. These observations are one important piece in understanding the puzzle that clouds represent.

Links:
S’COOL home page http://scool.larc.nasa.gov
S’COOL Rover Database http://scool.larc.nasa.gov/en_view_rover.html
CERES home page http://science.larc.nasa.gov/ceres
Aqua Satellite http://terra.nasa.gov
Terra Satellite http://aqua.nasa.gov
CALIPSO http://www-calipso.larc.nasa.gov/
CloudSat http://cloudsat.atmos.colostate.edu/

Cloud Observations

May 13th, 2009
by ATA.
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In Partnership with the NASA S’COOL Program

Daily observations of cloud cover and type will be made from Ocean Watch throughout the expedition as part of the NASA Students’ Cloud Observations On-Line (S’COOL) project. These data are used to verify data from the NASA CERES satellite instruments. This project represents the first time that cloud observations are collected consistently from the open ocean for the S’COOL project. Students following the expedition can contribute to this dataset by using the S’COOL Rover website to make their own cloud observations from their backyards and/or schools to compare with observations from Ocean Watch.

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