Notes from the Field

A variety of things during a day at sea The motion woke me up this morning around 10 am. We finally have some weather after days of calm seas. First things first, I made a B-line for the coffee machine in the galley. If you’ve never had a cup of coffee on the deck of […]

Here we are again, sailing, sampling, studying the ocean, and overall enjoying the adventure of living on a floating island with a diverse group of people and learning from them.  Today we are working on the most northern station and ready to bring back home samples and measurements. During my second cruise and third in […]

When we think about the ocean the first reflex is to imagine the blue of a paradise tropical island or massive waves hitting remote cliffs on a stormy night. The most adventurous may think about submarines exploring the deep ocean and rovers sampling underwater volcanoes. There is something extremely fascinating that sits right “in the […]

The response of cloud characteristics to increasing aerosol concentrations represents one of the largest uncertainties in our current understanding of climate change. We need to better understand the ability of aerosol particles to act as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) under relevant atmospheric conditions. CCN activation is determined by particle size, composition, and water vapor supersaturation. […]

The Small Stuff Matters The most important form of life in the ocean also happens to be the smallest. Phytoplankton provide the foundation of marine food webs, regulating global climate and the transport of nutrients and carbon. Phytoplankton populations fluctuate, sometimes growing high in numbers if they receive plenty of sunlight or nutrients. Other times, […]

Most of us think that our everyday lives put us under pressure, but the real pressure – in a physical sense – happens deep below the ocean surface. On Friday, most of us in the NAAMES III science teams aboard the Atlantis performed an exercise that clearly demonstrates that pressure. The ship is always buzzing […]

The Scripps research group focuses on aerosols, which are microscopic liquids and solids suspended in the air.  Aerosols may be formed over the ocean when wave generated bubbles burst and eject particles into the atmosphere.  Aerosols may also be formed from gas phase compounds released from the ocean that then react with sunlight and oxidants […]

Sea Sweep gently surfs Generating aerosol On the Atlantic While some aboard the Atlantis are fighting bubbles with rigor (see September 1, 2017 post), the atmospheric chemists on the bow of the ship are busy generating them. Not the same ones that the biologists were battling in the earlier post, but new ones that mimic […]

A Light Puzzle Today we were able to finish our first official station of NAAMES 3! Our group, the UCSB Optics team, saw a whirlwind of activity as we deployed half a dozen different instruments to begin to characterize all the different ways that light interacts with the ocean. You could call us the most […]