By Eric Lindstrom When we are doing work at sea, it hardly seems fair for NASA to hog the limelight. We are usually offering data from satellites, not ships, moorings, or gliders. There are partner agencies in the U.S. Government who make enormous contributions to the physical oceanography enterprise. In D.C., oceanographers know these agencies […]
By Eric Lindstrom SPURS Chief Scientist Ray Schmitt has been thinking about the salt in the ocean for a long time. He did his PhD thesis on an unusual form of mixing called “salt fingers,” which we will discuss in a later post. This small scale mixing process led him to consider the origins of […]
By Eric Lindstrom One of the things that we worry about on the ship, as part of our daily routine, is trash. Nothing goes over the side unless it is biodegradable. We have separate trash cans for plastics, foils, and other such material that would pollute the ocean. There are cans with paper liners for […]
By Eric Lindstrom The central mooring at the SPURS site is a critical piece of gear. It will provide us with a time series of upper ocean properties at one location over the entire year. We’ll build the other SPURS measurements around this spot on this and future voyages. We’ll “fly” the gliders in patterns […]
By Eric Lindstrom We just launched the first of our autonomous vehicles – a pink Seaglider with the sexy name of #189. Underwater gliders are the longest-range autonomous undersea vehicles in the oceans by virtue of their very simple propulsion mechanism: the translation of a vertical force into an horizontal one through use of wings. […]
By Eric Lindstrom “Why do sharks swim in saltwater? Because pepper water makes them sneeze!” Jokes aside, why is saltwater so important? Find out using our educational resources about ocean salinity. Along with our expedition, there are many web resources for educators wishing to incorporate oceanography and salinity into their curricula. This post highlights some […]
By Eric Lindstrom A workhorse of our voyage is the two primary means of measuring salinity from the ship. We use two different Conductivity, Temperature, and Depth (CTD) instruments. One is used on station, when the ship is stationary and the other is used while we are underway (smartly dubbed the underway CTD). Remember that […]
By Eric Lindstrom If you all are waiting to see some action at sea, I am sorry it is taking a bit to unfold. It takes about a week from Woods Hole to reach our study site at 25N, 38W. It’s good for us to have the time to check and re-check the instruments, get […]
By Eric Lindstrom Recent years have seen significant developments in satellites for oceanographers. The European Space Agency launched the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission and NASA launched the Aquarius instrument on the Argentine SAC-D mission. Salinity has always been a challenging but critically important measurement for oceanographers. The small changes in salinity that […]
