NASA launches mission off San Francisco coast to check ocean’s relationship to local weather change
To study the role of Earth’s oceans in climate change, NASA recently launched a mission 100 miles off the coast of San Francisco involving a ship, two aircraft, and a fleet of sailing drones and other robotic research vehicles.
Scientists are studying lesser-known features of the ocean’s surface, such as eddies and eddies, which they suspect may play an important role in the transfer of gases and heat between the atmosphere and the ocean. The mission began on October 19 when the research vessel Oceanus left Newport, Oregon and will end on November 6. During the recent storm, when the ship had to enter the port of San Francisco due to waves in the ocean, it made a brief pause in the study region, reaching 30 feet high.
Although NASA is best known for space exploration, it also operates a fleet of satellites for studying the earth’s surface, some of which focus on the oceans. This particular mission is known as the Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment, or S-MODE. Submesoscale refers to ocean dynamics less than 10 kilometers in diameter such as ocean eddies that swirl around the ocean surface and stir up the water.
“These eddies are making a really important impact on the climate,” said Tom Farrar of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the mission’s lead investigator, at a news conference on the mission on Friday.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the ocean absorbs 31% of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Farrar and others suggest that eddies have an impact on the exchange of heat and gases between the air and the ocean, and likely play a role in transporting heat, carbon, and oxygen from the surface to deeper layers of the ocean. But vortices are too small and too short to be studied by satellite, which is why the S-MODE mission uses so many different instruments at the same time, closer to the source.
The location in front of San Francisco Bay was chosen because it is located on the California Current, a dynamic movement of water along the west coast that is surrounded by many eddies. Two planes collect data on wind and currents on the ocean surface from different heights, one under the clouds and one at 28,000 feet, while the Oceanus and autonomous research vehicles collect images and measurements in the water.
“The goal is to map a complete 3-D structure,” said Farrar.
The Oceanus carried most of the marine robots out to sea, although five sailing drones, bright orange, solar-powered robotic vehicles, disembarked from Alameda and made their way to the study area. You can measure air and ocean currents, as well as salinity and chlorophyll levels, or the amount of phytoplankton in the water. With all the tools working together, the team hopes to study the eddies as they form to learn more about how the ocean is slowing the effects of climate change.
What they find can be used to support an international project NASA is participating in next year by using satellites to conduct the first global survey of all bodies of water on the planet, from oceans to lakes, Nadya said Vinogradova-Shiffer, program scientist from NASA’s Earth Sciences department at the briefing.
“Observing ocean circulation directly from space would be a great advance for science,” she said.
Tara Duggan is a contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: tduggan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @taraduggan
