Rutgers Center for Ocean Observing Leadership

Phytoplankton and water chemistry (chemistry can be and is fun!)

Who: The most excellent Van Mooy group from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution – with friends and collaborators from three other institutions!

When: November 22^nd to December 15^th

Where: We take samples from the top of the ocean to the bottom, to look at how phytoplankton are changing the water they live in and being changed by it.

Why? While algae might seem tiny and like they are not as important as animals like whales, seals, or penguins, they are actually what cause many of the changes in the world’s oceans! Even more than that, they are the food all those bigger animals eat!

My team looks at the ways that phytoplankton, which are tiny algae (a lot like plants), grow in the ocean. They need sunlight, so they are concentrated in the surface. However, they also need food, or nutrients, which they can use up quickly when there is enough light. My lab looks at the balance between things like nutrients and light, to see how phytoplankton change when those factors change.

Putting bottles of seawater into the filter rigs. This is how we filter the water to find out how much phytoplankton and particulate organic carbon there is inside one to two liters of seawater.

Not only can a single algal cell change how it’s growing, but the types of cells often change as they each are fairly particular in what they like. Think of them as picky eaters – they don’t stick around when their favorite dish isn’t at the table, or there isn’t enough of it – because someone else has pushed them out! This is what we refer to as a “niche”.

My favorite thing about phytoplankton is that they are not only impacted by the water around them, but they also change that water, in a really beautiful circle. To understand how these tiny organisms function, you have to understand the chemistry of the water. And, you have to understand how they are changing that chemistry as they grow, live, and eventually die and sink, or are eaten. What happens to algae when they die is almost as important as how they live.

Together, phytoplankton and the water they live in make up an ecosystem all on their own, which is beautiful all by itself. Then, you can add in how they are food for animals like krill, which feed penguins, seals, and whales. But really, it all starts at the most microscopic levels, and my goal with this research in Antarctica is to understand how phytoplankton are changing as the chemistry of the oceans change, and then how that might make a difference to those larger animals too.

About the author: Shavonna Bent is a graduate student at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. This is her third research cruise.

Phytoplankton, Lords of The Sea!

Wednesday, December 1st

CURRENT PROGRESS: Happy Antarctica Day!

Hey everyone, Quintin here! I’m a biological oceanographer with the LTER (Long-Term Ecological Research) project here on the Nathaniel B. Palmer (NBP). It’s another day of exciting Antarctic scenery here looking through the portholes on the NBP, since a large storm is hitting the Western Antarctic Peninsula! While that gives us a lot of high winds and cool waves to look at, it also means we have to shut down science until the weather is safe enough to drop our instruments over the side. This is definitely unfortunate, but it gives us all a great chance to make plans for the rest of the expedition and process data!

So far we have made significant progress down the peninsula and have reached Adelaide Island, one of the major islands on the coast (and home to Rothera Station, an Antarctic research base owned by the British!). Now that we have come so far south and have completed nearly 60% of our expedition, we are making plans to do process studies at a couple locations along the coast. Unlike our previous sampling sights, we will stay at these process study locations for 2-3 days and sample every 12 hours or more! We do this so we can understand the differences in our respective focus areas (e.g., phytoplankton, bacteria, zooplankton, physics, etc.) over time and run experiments that require us to be in one location for an extended period. It should be an exciting time, and marks one of the final stretches of science before we start packing up and heading back to the US!

PHYTOPLANKTON: The Grass Of The Sea

For biological oceanographers, part of being out in the field on research trips like this one is to collect samples of the plants and animals that live in the ocean so we can gather data from them later. I and others in my lab are focused on collecting and studying the phytoplankton (microscopic plants) in the ocean, and that means lots of filtering water! Much like the grasses that cows graze on in farms or the grass in your front lawn, phytoplankton are essentially the grass of the sea. They are super tiny bits of plant, made up of a single cell, that are everywhere in the surface ocean. The only difference between the grass on your lawn and the algae (phytoplankton) in the ocean is that the algae are too small to see! Despite being so small, the phytoplankton are super important to the ecosystem, since they are the ones that harvest energy from the sun and make it available to all the larger critters like zooplankton that are eaten by whales, seals, and penguins. Because the phytoplankton are so important, we want to understand how much there is, how they grow over time, and what different kinds of phytoplankton exist in the water. This information can tell us a lot about the base of the food web and how we might expect it to change over time to impact all of the larger critters that thrive in the unique Antarctic areas!

A picture of a diatom taken by a special camera called an Imaging Flow CytoBot. Diatoms are a type of phytoplankton that live all over the world, and there are many diatoms in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica.

About the author: Quintin Diou-Cass is a graduate student at Rutgers University. This is his fifth research cruise.

Let the science begin!!!

What: Science on the research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer has begun!

When: November 20 to November 22, 2021

Where: The ocean along the coast on the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula. The Antarctic Peninsula is the part of Antarctica that sticks up like a finger toward the southern tip of South America.

Why? We want to know what is going on with the ice, plants, and animals, and whether the conditions are changing from year to year.

Good morning from the research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer in the waters west of the Antarctic Peninsula. I am happy to report that we have started doing science!

Our first order of business was to drop off a field camp on an island. A group of seven scientists will live there for a month. Their main job is to walk around the island every day counting and observing all the seabirds and seals. Their camp is a few small wooden buildings up on a snowy hill. To get there, they had to make many trips back and forth from the ship to the island in small inflatable motorboats called “zodiacs.” One trip would be for people, then the next trip would be for a load of gear… and repeat! To get on the boast, people had to descend from the high edge of the ship into the small boat down in the water many feet below. They climbed down a rope ladder and dropped into the small boat one by one. We are thinking of our friends at the field camp and we hope they are doing well. We will pick them up after the end of our research cruise on our way back to port in South America.

A small boat called a “zodiac” drives out to drop off seal and seabird researchers at Cape Shirreff on Livingston Island, one of the South Shetland Islands.

After dropping off the field camp, we started sampling the water! Now that we have started sampling, each day when we go down to the labs, we ask, “When is the next CTD?” What we mean is, “When is the next time we are sending our big frame of bottles down into the ocean to get water?” The term “CTD” stands for Conductivity, Temperature, and Depth. Conductivity is a measure of the ocean’s salinity. The CTD is a small machine at the bottom of our big white frame we send into the water. The big white frame is called a “rosette” because it is a circle of bottles, or the “CTD-rosette.” Each bottle is open at both ends when it goes down through the water. Then, on the way back up, we sit at a computer that connects to the CTD-rosette and tell it when to close the bottles at lots of different depths below the surface. When we want to close a bottle underwater, we click a button on the computer that says “Fire!”

The CTD-rosette going into the water at the first place where we did our science sampling.

After our first few stations, we are steaming south. We have passed 64 degrees south latitude, which means the days are getting long. The sun comes up at about 3:00 AM and sets at about 11:00 PM, but it never fully gets dark. Instead, it looks like sunset and sunrise are one long time of day, where the sky looks like it does at dusk and dawn in the United States.

A view of the snowy mountains surrounding Bransfield Strait, the first place where we did our science sampling.

About the author: Jessie Turner is a postdoc (researcher) at the University of Connecticut. This is her fourth big research cruise.

Life on a Research Vessel

Life on the research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer, or the NBP for short, is fun and exciting! My daily routine changes every day and will change a lot once we start to sample for 24 hours a day, but for now here is what I do. I wake up on the top bunk of a bunk bed, climb down and pick out some work clothes to wear. I go downstairs to the galley, where there is a ton of delicious buffet-style food available. I usually sleep through breakfast, but a good example of a meal is what I had for lunch today. I had curried veggies and rice, hummus and cucumbers from the salad bar, and an orange. There are tons of options for everyone and lots of yummy desserts and snacks available all day!

Afterwards, I head to my lab to start preparing for the constant CTD sampling. This could be anything from organizing and setting up our lab to cleaning equipment to calibrating machines. We also had to spend time tying down all our equipment and placing grip mats under things that could slide because it was a rocky ride here!

To get from Chile to Antarctica we had to cross the Drake Passage, which is a notoriously rough channel where two seas meet. After lab work, if I have spare time (which I almost always do at this stage of our trip), I head to the third-floor conference room or another quiet room to do some schoolwork. I’m currently balancing five college classes along with working here, which is time consuming but manageable. There’s enough Wi-Fi for all of us, and there’s even enough to make phone calls home! If I’m feeling adventurous and the technicians give us the clear, I can go outside to view the seas from the back deck or on one of the upper-level decks. The captain also lets you watch the front of the ship from the bridge, the control room, which is great for bird and whale watching!

The NBP has a nice gym for the few times I feel like working out and there’s even a sauna. At night, I can head to the second-floor lounge (equipped with super comfy chairs) to pick from one of the 3,000+ movies or games that are available.

Life on the NBP is more relaxed now, but soon it will become hectic with the 24/7 sampling. For now, I’ll enjoy this!

RUCOOL Updates: August-September 2021

Students have started returning to campus as has the RUCOOL team, with our faculty teaching seven courses this semester. You will note from several of the highlights below, that it’s great to be back on campus.

State 

• Rutgers is working with the NOAA Weather Forecasting Office (WFO) Philadelphia to develop wave measurements from High Frequency radar (HF-Radar).  The HF-Radars traditionally provide surface current measurements that are utilized by NOAA and US Coast Guard.  Another measurement that is under development is wave height, period and direction.  Recently WFO Philadelphia utilized HF-Radar data to analyze the swell from Hurricane Larry and forecaster Nicholas Carr mentioned it in his rip current forecast discussion.
• RUCOOL’s Joe Brodie and Josh Kohut, together with Doug Zemeckis of NJAES, issued the final report on the 2021 Partners in Science Workshop: Identifying Ecological Metrics and Sampling Strategies for Baseline Monitoring During Offshore Wind Development, sponsored by NJBPU. The full report is available at: https://go.rutgers.edu/PS-Report-2021.
• Grace Saba is collaborating with NJDEP to organize a workshop focused on developing an ocean acidification monitoring network for the state of NJ. The virtual workshop is scheduled to be held in November.
• R/V Rutgers Captain Chip Haldeman was able to save a flotilla of Rutgers Crew boats and docks from destruction during the Hurricane Ida Flooding. The full story of Chip’s heroics is here.
• Zdenka Willis, president of the Marine Technology Society (MTS), visited RUCOOL in August to kick off the early semester for our new cohort of Masters of Operational Oceanography graduate students. Zdenka shared her history, career advice and benefits of joining the MTS Society with our students. In the following weeks, the students completed their glider and HF-Radar School as preparation for the fall semester.
• On August 5, Rutgers President Holloway and School of Engineering Dean Farris hosted Congressman Frank Pallone and US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. They were introduced to glider RU33 while discussing RUCOOL’s history of state-of-the-art research with NOAA and others.
• Oscar Schofield chaired the committee working on the reorganization of Rutgers Earth Ocean and Atmospheric Science Institute.

National

• The RIOS summer students completed their work in person at DMCS and Haskin Labs this August. The students completed authentic research experiences that ranged from undersea volcanoes, shellfish aquaculture, to offshore wind.  Our students spanned topics from our ancient ocean to present day and from the high Arctic to the coastal seas around Antarctica.  We thank the university support and all involved who helped ensure that these students could work in a safe and productive environment all summer.
• Rutgers has been providing a leadership role on the NOAA led Hurricane Glider weekly meetings during this 2021 hurricane season. The team is charged with comparing in situ data with NOAA, Navy and university ocean models to evaluate which work best in different situations, with the ultimate goal being to improve hurricane intensity forecasts.
• The RUCOOL Education Team posted new Data Labs widgets (ecosystems, profiles, update pH and pCO2).
• The Education Team presented Icy Adventure to the 4H STEM ambassadors and 4H from Home The team also presented two sessions on robotics (gliders and drones) to the 4H STEM ambassadors group.

International

• Scott Glenn is co-chair of NOAA’s Science Advisory Board Environmental Information Services Working Group (EISWG). This group is focused on a congressionally authorized committee whose charge is to track NOAA progress on the Weather Research and Forecast Innovation Act.
• Scott Glenn is co-chair  of the Priorities for Weather Research (PWR) study. This group of 149 subject matter experts is charged with creating a decadal report for future investments in NOAA to support better forecasts authorized by the 2021 Omnibus Appropriations Act.
• RUCOOL completed the 2021 International Challenger Glider mission in the Caribbean with the deployment of RU29 from St. Thomas US Virgin Islands. The glider sampled the Windward Islands to collect critical ocean data in hurricane prone regions, while simultaneously building international partnerships. This was the first time an ADCP (currents) and Microrider (turbulence) were deployed on a glider in this region. The datasets will be a focus of study this winter.
• Oscar Schofield Chaired a National Academy Sciences Study “Mid-Course Assessment of NSF progress on 2015 Strategic Vision for Antarctic and Southern Ocean Research”.  The public version of the report is being released in October.
• Rutgers begins its next Antarctic field expedition in October. Rutgers is anchoring the Palmer LTER cruise, which is one of the only two ship expeditions by the United States this pandemic year for the Southern Ocean.

Student Awards

• RUCOOL Grad Student Schuyler Nardelli won the MTS Student Poster competition at this year’s Oceans 2021 meeting in San Diego.
• Grad Student Liza Wright-Fairbanks won the Walter Munk Scholar award at OCEANS 2021 in San Diego. Established in 2019, the Award honors Walter Munk’s legacy of daring exploration and discovery through ocean scientific and technology research, ocean education or ocean conservation; open to those from any country or territory.
• In addition to Schuyler and Liza, the NJ Student Section won the MTS award for outstanding Student Section at the Oceans 2021 San Diego meeting. This section includes student members from Rutgers, Stockton University, Stevens Inst. of Technology and Monmouth University.
• Rachel Davitt (co-mentored by Grace Saba and Kim Thamatrakoln), along with two other students, won Best Student Poster Presentation for the Rutgers Research Internships in Ocean Science (RIOS), NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. Becca xx (mentored by Travis Miles) received runner-up.

Newly Funded Research 

• NASA, “Southern ocean carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM) Rapid Response”, O. Schofield ($472,00 over 2 years)
• Jet Propulsion Laboratory, “Surface Water and Ocean Topography”, O. Schofield ($502,584 over 2 years)
• NSF, “GOALI: Generation v. Degradation: Striking the optimal balance for wind farm profitability via digitization, predictive and prescriptive analytics,” A. Ezzat (SOE), J. Brodie, M. Mousa (Cognite), ($225,000 over 3 years)
• NSF, “SWIFT: Enabling Spectrum Coexistence of 5G mmWave and Passive Weather Sensing,” N. Mandayam (SOE), C.T. Wu (SOE), R.Q. Wang (SOE), J. Brodie, ($750,000 over 3 years)

Papers Published: (**Current or Former Graduate Student or Postdoctoral Researchers)

• Nazzaro, L., Slesinger, E., Kohut, J., Saba, G.K., Saba, V.S. 2021. Sensitivity of marine fish thermal habitat models to fishery data sources. Ecology and Evolution 11(19): 13001-13013, http://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7817.
• Brodie, J., Kohut, J., Zemeckis, D. 2021. Partners in Science Workshop: Identifying Ecological Metrics and Sampling Strategies for Baseline Monitoring During Offshore Wind Development.

RUCOOL Meetings & Conferences 

RUCOOL continues to lead/attend numerous virtual meetings. Here are some meetings which our team attended and/or presented: MTS Oceans 2021 San Diego, MARACOOS Annual meeting, Lewes Yacht Club MARACOOS OceansMap Meeting, RIOS 2021, Underwater Glider User Group (UG2) Meeting, LTER Annual Meeting, Global Ocean Biogeochemistry Array (GO-BGC) Annual Meeting, NOAA Ocean Acidification Program (OAP) Vulnerability Assessment Workshop, Montclair State University Clean and Sustainable Energy Summit 2021.

RUCOOL Updates: June-July 2021

As we start returning to the office, our team is now enjoying face to face discussions rather than through Zoom, Webex, Meets and Teams. Summer is always a busy time around here with coastal ocean research and summer RIOS students, and this summer is no different.

State

• Josh Kohut joined a three person panel including Governor Florio for the NJ Spotlight News program focused on plans for offshore wind turbine installations along the NJ coast. The program was titled “Offshore Wind in New Jersey: Meeting the State’s Clean Energy and Economic Goals”.
• Grace Saba joined co-PIs Robert Chant and Nicole Fahrenfeld and three summer undergraduate interns on a research cruise investigating microplastics and their consumption by zooplankton in the Delaware Bay.
• Our second cohort of Operational Oceanography Masters students, Ted Thompson and Ailey Sheehan, both successfully defended their theses on back to back days in July. Congrats Ted and Ailey! There is no time to rest for our faculty and the 3rd cohort will arrive in early August for HF-RADAR, glider and programming school.
• Through the ECO-PAM project, RUCOOL is partnering with Ørsted to monitor the local ecology and oceanography within and around the Ocean Wind lease area. The first deployment year was completed in July, with 4 successful glider deployments off of NJ that tracked local fish and marine mammals from the summer through the winter.
• RUCOOL is working with multiple members of DMCS (T. Grothues, J. Morson, D. Munroe, D. Zemeckis, G. Saba, J. Kohut and A. Vastano) on the Ørsted Fisheries project preparation. The team is gearing up quickly for numerous fish surveys that will begin in the early fall.
• RUCOOL was involved with 8 glider deployments in June and July. Geographically the gliders swam in waters that ranged from the Gulf of Maine, to the coast of NJ, to the Caribbean. Funding for our glider research came from NOAA and the Vetelsen Foundation. RU29 was attacked by a shark just west of Anguilla, but was recovered and will be redeployed in late August or early September.

National

• This summer RUCOOL was happy to welcome 12 undergraduate students to SEBS for an in-person summer internship. Students based on the main campus in New Brunswick and our Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory completed authentic research experiences that ranged from undersea volcanoes, shellfish aquaculture, to offshore wind.  Our students spanned topics from our ancient ocean to present day and from the high Arctic to the coastal seas around Antarctica.  We thank the university support and all involved who helped ensure that these students could work in a safe and productive environment all summer.
• Multiple members of the RUCOOL team attended and presented at the MARACOOS HF-Radar Installation ceremony in Lewes, DE. Attendees included US Senator Tom Carper, Director of the National Weather Service, Louis Uccellini, and Carl Gouldman, head of US IOOS.
• RUCOOL tracked the ocean’s response to the passage of Tropical Storm Elsa as it moved through the mid-Atlantic. The storm was modelled in real time by the Rutgers Weather Research and Forecasting model (RUWRF).  For a complete article and animations of the storm, click here.
• The RUCOOL education team was very busy this summer. Janice McDonnell taught our Icy Adventure program in Paterson Science and Technology Charter School to summer school students. Janice also completed several workshops for the ARIS Broader Impacts Professional Community in June. Carrie Ferraro and Janice taught a Climate Change Professional Development course for 28 teachers. Janice also served as a “spark” panelist and presenter for the OOI Pioneer Array workshop. Sage Lichtenwaner and Janice released the OOI Lab Manual 2.0. While the manual is designed to complement introductory oceanography courses, it is modular by design, so specific labs can be used in related courses as well. The manual will be pilot tested by 22 new faculty this fall.

International

• In partnership with Texas A&M and several other partners from the US and Mexico, Rutgers submitted the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine proposal for Understanding the Gulf Ocean System. Should we be awarded, Rutgers’ part in this $19 million proposal is to act as the Data Management team and deploy several gliders in the Gulf of Mexico over the next 5 years with a major goal of improving tropical cyclone forecasts.
• Scott Glenn is co-chair of NOAA’s Science Advisory Board Environmental Information Services Working Group (133 members). In July they completed the 3 month information gathering phase for the Weather Research Decadal Report that will be sent to the US Congress. In August they will move into the integration phase.
• RUCOOL initiated the 2021 International Challenger Glider mission in the Caribbean with the deployment of RU29 from St. Thomas US Virgin Islands. The glider will sample the Windward Islands to collect critical ocean data in hurricane prone regions, while simultaneously building international partnerships.
• Oscar Schofield was asked to serve on the United Kingdom BIOPOLE science advisory committee. The BIOPOLE is a EU program focused on determining how polar ecosystems regulate the balance of carbon and nutrients in the world’s oceans and through it their effect on global productivity and carbon storage.
• Oscar Schofield was asked to serve on the International Strategic Visioning committee for the Charney School of Marine Science at the University of Haifa (Israel).
• Travis Miles was an invited speaker by The Oceanography Society for their Exploring Ocean Instrumentation webinar series. He presented a talk on “Sediment Resuspension Observations from a Glider Integrated Sequoia Scientific LISST Particle Analyser.”

Student Awards

• RUCOOL students Schuyler Nardelli and Elizabeth (Liza) Wright-Fairbanks join two other EOAS graduate students in being selected as finalists to receive the 2022 John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship. These four students make the most awardees of any institution of higher education in the United States. Julia Engdahl, recent RUCOOL Masters in Oceanography graduate, won the NOAA Professional Excellence Award during her first year as a contractor for NOAA CO-OPS (Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services).
• Emily Slesinger (Saba PhD student) received the John E. Skinner Memorial Award from the American Fisheries Society
• Graduate Student Sam Coakley received the Bill Lapenta NOAA internship at NOAA’s Global Ocean Modeling and Observing Program.

Newly Funded Research

• Office of Naval Research, “Predictions of Acoustics with Smart Experimental Networks of Gliders”, Travis Miles ($396,241 over 3 years).
• NJ Board of Public Utilities, “BPU Wind Resource Evaluation Modification”, Scott Glenn, Travis Miles, Joe Brodie, Josh Kohut ($576,346 for 15 months).
• NOAA Ocean Acidification Program, “Ocean Acidification Synthesis Products for Northeast Fisheries Science Center State of the Ecosystem Reports”, Grace Saba ($16,326). (Additional amount pending: $62,673).
• NJDEP, “Development of a Statewide Acidification Monitoring Network in New Jersey”, Grace Saba, ($48,845).

Papers Published: (**Current or Former Graduate Student or Postdoctoral Researchers)

• Miles, T., Slade, W., Glenn, S. August 2021. Sediment Resuspension and Transport from a Glider-Integrated Laser in Situ Scattering and Transmissometry (LISST) Particle Analyzer. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology. Volume 38. DOI: 10.1175/JTECH-D-20-0207.1
• Kim, H. H., Luo, Y., Ducklow, H. W., Schofield, O., Steinberg, D. K., Doney, S. C. 2021. WAP-1D-VAR v1.0: Development and Evaluation of a One-Dimensional Variational Data Assimilation Model for the Marine Ecosystem Along the West Antarctic Peninsula. Geoscientific Model Development. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2020-375.
• **Lin, Y., Moreno, C., Marchetti, A., Ducklow, H., Schofield, O., Chaffron, S., Delage, E., Eveillard, D., Cassar, N. Decrease in plankton diversity and biological carbon fluxes with a reduction in sea ice extent at western Antarctic Peninsula. Nature Communications. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-25235-w.

RUCOOL Meetings & Conferences

RUCOOL continues to lead/attend numerous virtual meetings. Here are some meetings which our team attended and/or presented: NOAA Integrated Ocean Observing System DMAC Meeting, OOI Pioneer Array Innovations Lab, MARACOOS Board Meeting, NOAA Science Advisory Board Meeting, NJ Spotlight News Offshore Wind Energy in NJ Broadcast, MARACOOS HF-Radar Installation Ceremony in Lewes DE, The Oceanography Society Webinar Series Exploring Ocean Instrumentation.

Early Season in the Mid Atlantic

One purpose of this blog is to catalog our observations as the hurricane season progresses. In the Mid Atlantic, the challenge for years in the operational models has been to reproduce the strong 2 layer structure of the summer, the warm and fresh surface layer and the cold and salty bottom layer separated by a very strong thermocline/halocline.

For the glider operators in the Mid Atlantic, here is a quick look at the operational models from the NSF OOI Coastal Pioneer Array.  The purpose is to highlight the complex structures near the shelf break that we see in the region around the Pioneer Array.  First the temperature profiles.  The highlight here is the remarkable agreement between the glider data in blue and the data assimilative RTOFS model in green.  The background 2 layer structure is there with that main thermocline running between 20 m and 40 m – amazing agreement between green model and blue data.  Below 40 m, we see the temperature warm up.  This is a type of bottom intrusion of warm and salty water from offshore.  Glider colleagues at VIMS have been studying these intrusions for years.  Both the blue RTOFS model and the red GOFS model are seeing the intrusion, but the match between blue and green is again remarkable.  Now look at the surface, a thin layer of cool water about 5 m deep.  Definitely need to check the salinity on this.

Below is the salinity.  The main halocline between 20 m and 40 m is again well represented by RTOFS.  The warm water intrusion at the bottom is confirmed to be salty, the signature of warm salty slope water moving up onto the shelf.   And the surface layer is indeed very fresh, so a cool and fresh layer has moved in along the surface.  The source of this water needs to be determined.  It is not in the models, so they might not help us.  Likely first stop is the satellite imagery.

Bottom line message: RTOFS is doing a really good job of getting the main two layer system correct at the Pioneer array, as well as the bottom intrusion of warm salty water from offshore.  RTOFS is doing this without the bias seen in GOFS.  Both ROTFS and GOFS outperform Copernicus in this area as usual.  None of the models are doing well with the cold, fresh surface layer, although GOFS does have some of this feature in the salinity profile.  Further investigation needed to determine the transport pathways for the cold fresh surface water.

Disturbance in the Gulf

The disturbance in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico is forecast to start moving north tomorrow with a 70% chance of cyclone formation in the next 48 hours.  Lets take a look at the oceanographic conditions in front of the storm.

First we have the SST maps from our two operational models, the NOAA RTOFS on the left and Navy GOFS on the right.  The surface waters of the western Gulf are warmest, with a large area in the northwester Gulf above 29C.  GOFS looks to be slightly warmer than RTOFS at the surface. The color-filled circles represent the locations of recently surfaced Argo float profiles.

Looking at the temperature at a depth of 200m, we see a large area of colder water below 15C in the northwestern Gulf.  Highest surface temps, lowest temps at 200 m, means significant stratification in this region.  At 200 m you can better see the mesoscale structures.  Each model has the extended Loop Current, and that band of warm water stretching diagonally across the Gulf from northeast to southwest.  The warm band exists in both models, but the mesoscale structure has differences.

Last map comparison is the surface salinity. Lots of fresh water from the Mississippi River in both models along the northern Gulf coast, extending way offshore in the northwester Gulf, again increasing the stratification.

Now a quick look at the Argo floats.  We’ll publish the orange float #4902916, the most western one on the map.   Here we zoom into the upper 400 m, the region where we often see the largest differences between the model profiles.  The float data is in blue, RTOFS green, and GOFS orange.  Temperature profiles are in good agreement between models and data, with GOFS slightly warmer at the surface and closer to the float observation. GOFS tends to follow the Argo profile quite closely. RTOFS tends to be a bit warmer below the surface mixed layer and a bit colder at 150 m.   Salinity is similar with GOFS tending to follow the profile more closely, and RTOFS a bit fresher at depth and a bit saltier near the surface.  Neither model is getting the very low salinity observed in the freshwater surface barrier layer.

So what dis we learn about oceanographic conditions in the Western Gulf where the current disturbance may be headed?  The  north western Gulf surface waters are the warmest in the Gulf, above 29C, and the western Gulf is highly stratified with cold water at depth and low salinity water at the surface.  The stratification acts to inhibit mixing and cooling of the surface water.  If the winds are sufficient to overcome the stratification, there is a large source of cooler water less than 40 m below the surface that could help rapidly cool the surface water.  We have the possibility of two gliders, a Navy glider and a TAMU glider to be in place to capture the response if this develops.

RUCOOL Updates: April-May 20201

Field Campaign & Science Updates

The spring semester for RUCOOL was a success in the classroom as well as in the proposal, funding and research areas. Thanks to several successful proposals, it looks to be a very busy summer and fall along the NJ shore!

State

• The second cohort of the Operational Oceanography Masters Degree finished their final classes and are interviewing for jobs!
• Operational Masters student Theodore Thompson submitted a code notebook to the NSF Earthcube Student Funding and Educational Opportunity. Ted is competing with students around the country in a call to “create an integrated environment for the sharing of geoscience data and knowledge in an open, transparent, and inclusive manner.” Ted utilized his training in the program to create an interactive notebook deploying ocean datasets to inform the recreational bone fishing industry in his native country the Bahamas.
• RUCOOL contributed an ‘op-ed’ describing the Operational Oceanography Masters program to a book published in May titled “Preparing a Workforce for the New Blue Economy: People, Products and Policies” (editors Richard Spinrad, NOAA Administrator, and Liesl Hotaling, Marine Technology Society VP of Communications).
• Mike Crowley and Kelly Knee (RPS Group) taught members of the Raritan Yacht Club to use the MARACOOS ocean data visualization website https;//oceansmap.maracoos.org. The Yacht Club learned that their Zoom account maxed out at 200 people! It was an overwhelmingly positive event that we will follow up on in the fall.
• Grace Saba co-presented an invited webinar (with Megan Rutkowski at NJDEP) entitled “Ocean Acidification Action Planning in the State of New Jersey” sponsored by the Mid-Atlantic Coastal Acidification Network (MACAN).
• George H. Cook Honors students Mollie Passacantando and Marissa Guzik successfully completed and presented their Honors theses.
• RUCOOL began hosting a monthly research update on offshore wind activities for the NJ Board of Public Utilities (BPU) and the NJ Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

National

• Our bi-monthly updates do not usually include updates on proposals, but these past two months were unlike any we can remember over the last few years. They were dominated by numerous proposal submissions, including ones to the Department of Energy (3), Orsted (2), NOAA (2), NJDEP (2), NSF (2) and the Simmons Foundation.
• Josh Kohut and Grace Saba were planning team members for the Mid-Atlantic Ocean Forum session Innovative Technologies and Approaches for Understanding Ocean Changes, for which Josh was the moderator.
• Grace Saba and Travis Miles were active members of the Rutgers University URGE (Unlearning Racism in the Geosciences) pod and served as deliverable leaders focused on Rutgers University hiring & graduate admissions policies. (Shouldn’t this be state as URGE is a University program)
• Grace Saba and PhD student Emily Slesinger contributed to and are co-authors on the recently released NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s 2021 State of the Ecosystem reports for the Mid-Atlantic (https://apps-nefsc.fisheries.noaa.gov/rcb/publications/SOE-MAFMC-2021-508-Final.pdf) and New England (https://apps-nefsc.fisheries.noaa.gov/rcb/publications/SOE-NEFMC-2021-508-Final.pdf).
• The RUCOOL education team posted the final set of Polar Literacy and Polar Scientist Spotlight videos. You can find them all at https://polar-ice.org/polar-literacy-initiative/. Additionally, in April they posted a series of essays on using Python from our Data Lab Fellows https://datalab.marine.rutgers.edu/blog/
• Janice McDonnell provided hands-on training on the use of a suite of tools for Broader Impacts Training to professionals around the country, including most recently at the joint Broader Impacts Summit 2021, hosted by the NSF funded ARIS center and Broader Impacts Canada.
• Grace Saba co-presented an invited talk (with Robert Chant, Nicole Fahrenfeld, and Georgia Arbuckle-Keil) entitled “Delaware Bay river plumes as a control on microplastic entry into the food chain” at the NOAA Marine Debris Program PI meeting. Grace also presented an invited talk entitled “Supplementing regional ocean acidification monitoring with glider-based measurements” at the Mid-Atlantic Ocean Forum: Innovative Technologies and Approaches for Understanding Ocean Changes.

International

• Oscar Schofield co-Chaired an international virtual meeting sponsored by the G7 Future of the Seas and Oceans Initiative (FSOI), which brought together stakeholders spanning from Fisheries Management, Ocean Carbon Budget Verification, and Environmental Forecasting and Modeling to assess what positive contributions BGC (Bio Geochemical Argo Floats) might provide. The goal was to develop a global array of 1000 BGC profiling floats, each carrying 6 new biogeochemical sensors.  The meeting was held in multiple time zones throughout the month of May and had 1008 attendees spanning over 15 countries.  The meeting entrained science ministers from across Europe (England, Germany, France, Italy) and from the United States the National Science Foundation, NASA, NOAA and the White House.
• The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) Understanding Gulf Ocean Systems (UGOS) effort to deploy HF Radars in Yucatan and Cuba is spinning back up as COVID restrictions relax and some members of the team from Texas A&M University are allowed to travel to at least to Mexico.
• Scott Glenn presented the NASEM OceanShot on Transformative Ocean Observing for Hurricane Forecasting, Readiness and Response in the Caribbean Tropical Storm Corridor (Caribe Corredores) to the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO’s Regional Secretariat for the IOCARIBE. The project was encouraged by member states to proceed as an international co-development pilot.

Student Awards

• Emily Slesinger (Saba PhD student) received the Rutgers University and Louis Bevier Fellowship Award.
• Jessica Valenti (Saba post-doc) received the Rutgers University School of Graduate Studies Excellence in Leadership and Teaching Award.
• Lauren Cook (Saba PhD student) was awarded the 2021 Con Edison Waterfront Scholar to attend the Waterfront Alliance’s annual Waterfront Conference.

Newly Funded Research

• NSF Long Term Ecological Research (LTER), “LTER: Ecological Response and Resilience to “Press-Pulse” Disturbances and a Recent Decadal Reversal in Sea Ice Trends Along the West Antarctic Peninsula” Oscar Schofield ($2,374,386 over 2 years).
• NASA Rapid Response Program. 2021-2022. “Improving our understanding in situ carbon dynamics to ocean color in the Southern Ocean by adding bio-optical instrumentation to the SOCCOM Float-based Observing System” Schofield, Riser, Tally ($471,920)

Papers Published: (**Current or Former Graduate Student or Postdoctoral Researchers)

• Le Hénaff, M., Domingues, R., Halliwell, G., Zhang, J. A., Kim, H.-S., Aristizabal, M., Miles, T., Glenn, S., Goni, G.. (2021). The role of the Gulf of Mexico ocean conditions in the intensification of Hurricane Michael (2018). Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 126, e2020JC016969
• Martin, A.H., Pearson, H., Saba, G.K., Olsen, E.M. 2021. Integral functions of marine vertebrates in the ocean carbon cycle and climate change mitigation. One Earth 4(5): 680-693.
• Meredith, M. P., Stammerjohn, S. E., Ducklow, H. W., Leng, M. J., Arrrowsmith, C., Brearley, A. J., Venabkes, H. J, Barnham, M., Melchiorr, Wessem, J., Schofield, O., Waite, N. Local- and large-scale drivers of variability in the coastal freshwater budget of the Western Antarctic Peninsula. Journal of Geophysical Research. DOI: 10.1029/2021JC017172
• Murphy, S. C., L. J. Nazzaro, J. Simkins, M. J. Oliver, Kohut, M. Crowley, and T. N. Miles (2021), Remote Sensing of Environment Persistent upwelling in the Mid-Atlantic Bight detected using gap-filled , high-resolution satellite SST, Remote Sens. Environ., 262, 112487, doi:10.1016/j.rse.2021.112487
• Saba GK, Bockus, AB., Shaw, CT., Seibel, BA. 2021. Combined effects of ocean acidification and elevated temperature on feeding, growth, and physiological processes of Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba). Marine Ecology Progress Series 665: 1-18, https://doi.org/10.3354/meps13715. Selected as a Feature Article.
• **Schultz, C., Doney, S. C., Hauck, J., Kavanaugh, M. T. Schofield, O. 2021. Modeling phytoplankton blooms and inorganic carbon responses to sea-ice variability in the West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP). Journal of Geophysical Research. Geosciences. DOI: 10.1002/essoar.10505538.1
• Beaird, N., Glenn, S., Miles, T., Saba, G., Kohut, J., & Schofield, O. (2021). Case study: RUCOOL Operational Oceanography Masters—workforce development case study. Preparing a Workforce for the New Blue Economy. Elsevier, 2021.

RUCOOL Meetings & Conferences

RUCOOL continues to lead/attend numerous virtual meetings. Here are some meetings which our team attended and/or presented: National Ocean Science Board meeting (virtual tour of RUCOOL), Mid-Atlantic Committee on the Ocean (MACO) Ocean Forum, OceanGliders Best Practices Workshop (hosted and presented), Mid Atlantic Telemetry Observation System Annual Meeting, New York Environmental Technical Working Group State of the Science Workshop Culmination Webinar, Raritan Yacht Club MARACOOS Meeting, G7 Future of the Seas and Oceans Initiative (FSOI), Priorities for Weather Research (PWR) Report to Congress.

Hurricane Gliders 2021

Today marks the start of our 10th year of dedicated storm glider flights, and the 4th year of the international North Atlantic hurricane glider picket lines.  Just like the hurricanes in nature, we are spinning up the hurricane glider deployments and the hurricane blog before the official start of hurricane season.  Our objective, to help keep the ocean components of the forecast models on track well ahead of any hurricane, requires us to mover to earlier and earlier underwater glider deployments.

The hurricane blog is about the ocean, how the ocean is impacted by the intense hurricane forcing, and how the ocean feeds back on hurricane intensity.  We care about the full continuous spectrum of intensity change, including the “human-defined” rapid intensification, and also rapid weakening. Over the last few years of the hurricane glider picket line, we have defined the Essential Ocean Features that impact North Atlantic hurricane intensity, and have noted that they are regionally dependent.  Our 4 hurricane regions, based on the Essential Ocean Features they contain, are the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, the South Atlantic Bight, and the Mid Atlantic Bight.  These regions roughly correspond to the U.S. IOOS Regional Association locations, with the simple caveat that nature is not constrained by national boundaries, and we must include the other national and international waters adjacent to our IOOS Regions in our hurricane analyses.

The 2021 hurricane blog will focus on a comparison of two operational global ocean models [NOAA’s Real Time Ocean Forecast System (RTOFS) and the Navy’s Global Ocean Forecast System (GOFS)] and three regional coupled atmosphere ocean forecast models (HWRF, HMON and HAFS).  We also focus on the use of profile data from underwater gliders and Argo floats, and the evaluation of the ocean component of these models with the profile data.  This serves as another set of eyes looking at the ocean models that are already undergoing their regular evaluation processes as part of these national efforts.

This blog is also intended to support student research. This is where we leave that trail of bread crumbs that document the research issues we discover as we move through the hurricane season, making it easier to retrace events during the end of season look-backs,  and hopefully providing students opportunities to jump right into research studies that will have an impact.

This year we are starting the season early.  The first hurricane glider was deployed in the Mid Atlantic on May 3.  We’ll start seeing its data making it through the system in about a day.  We’ll start by looking at the general conditions for the Mid Atlantic before today’s glider is assimilated.