Articles

Expanding Fleet of Autonomous Floating Robots Targets Deeper Understanding of Global Ocean Dynamics

In 2023, oceanographers will deploy hundreds of free-drifting robotic floats equipped with custom-built sensors engineered to measure multiple biogeochemical (BGC) characteristics of the world’s oceans, including pH, oxygen, nitrate, and chlorophyll levels. 

Chris Palmer, March 2023, Engineering. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eng.2023.01.001

What’s climate change really doing to the ocean? Ask the robots

To monitor the impact of climate change on the marine ecosystem—from productivity to fisheries to ocean acidification—scientists need a variety of chemical measurements. To that end, research groups around the world have worked in collaboration to develop additional sensors to include on the bodies of Argo floats, turning them into automated biogeochemical floats.

Mariana Bif, January 26, 2022, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Global Ocean Climate Change: Observing From Ships

Have you stood on the beach or crossed the ocean on a plane, wondered at the enormous size of the ocean, and possibly thought about how it regulates our climate? Or how our climate is changing? Or what harm our extra carbon dioxide and heat are causing to life in the ocean?

Lynne Talley, September 30, 2021, Frontiers for Young Minds. 9:495240. https://doi.org/10.3389/frym.2021.495240

McDougle Middle Students Celebrate “Cheerwine”

The Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica is regarded by scientists as a large and crucial absorber of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. New findings from autonomous floats deployed in the Southern Ocean, however, provide the first comprehensive data to suggest that, in winter, the open water nearest the sea ice surrounding Antarctica releases significantly more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than previously thought.

December 2020, Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools

Fleet of robotic probes will monitor global warming’s impact on microscopic ocean life

A single drop of seawater holds millions of phytoplankton, a mix of algae, bacteria, and protocellular creatures. Across the world’s oceans these photosynthesizing microbes pump out more than half of the planet’s oxygen, while slowing climate change by capturing an estimated 25% of the carbon dioxide (CO₂) released from humanity’s burning of fossil fuels. But the scale of this vital chemistry is mostly a guess, and there’s little sense of how it will change as temperatures rise. “What’s happening out there? We have no idea really,” says Susan Wijffels, a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

October 29, 2020, Science Magazine

Brrrr! ‘Supercooled’ waters make nearby Antarctic seas seem balmy

Data collected from research ships, autonomous floats and sensor-wearing Southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) help to show that tongues of ultra-frigid seawater are relatively common in the Southern Ocean.

*This article is only available to Nature subscribers

October 21, 2020, Nature Research Highlights. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02956-4

Diving robots find that Antarctic seas release surprising amounts of carbon dioxide in winter

The Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica is regarded by scientists as a large and crucial absorber of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. New findings from autonomous floats deployed in the Southern Ocean, however, provide the first comprehensive data to suggest that, in winter, the open water nearest the sea ice surrounding Antarctica releases significantly more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than previously thought.

August 14, 2018, Princeton University News