Rutgers, NOAA and glider maker mark RUCOOL milestone For 30 years Rutgers’ Center for Ocean Observing Leadership (RUCOOL) has taken the lead in pioneering research that has changed our understanding of the oceans and the way information is collected. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Administrator Rick Spinrad joined Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway and marine and coastal science researchers and students last week to celebrate the accomplishments of RUCOOL and to look back at the research gains made since Superstorm Sandy 10 years ago. “I’m really proud of everything that’s going on here at Rutgers,” said Spinrad, who has supported the research efforts of Rutgers faculty and students, led by RUCOOL co-director Scott Glenn, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences, and department chair and Distinguished Professor Oscar Schofield. Working with government, industry, and academic partners, RUCOOL guides underwater gliders that provide observational data – combined with data gathered from planes that fly into hurricanes and the Argo fleet of robotic instruments that drift with the ocean currents and move between the surface and a mid-water level – to deliver more accurate views of ocean activity in hurricane models. The resulting models lead to better hurricane monitoring by NOAA and forecasting by the National Weather Service. “As the land grant institution of New Jersey, Rutgers recognizes our key role in equipping our local communities and all of our 21 counties with the research and information needed to prepare for the change in climate,” Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway said. He congratulated the RUCOOL team for three decades of service to the state, country, and world last week at the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers-New Brunswick. Spinrad recalled early discussions decades ago with Glenn and Schofield about the idea of sending a glider across the Atlantic Ocean to gather needed data and information. Spinrad and Rutgers alumnus Craig McLean, recently retired as assistant administrator of NOAA Research, supported Rutgers researchers as they developed the glider technology with Teledyne Webb Research. Today, Rutgers is the third-largest operator of ocean gliders behind only the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Navy and the technology deployed is more important than ever. “Hurricane Harvey dumped five feet of rain on the Houston area. Ian dumped two feet of rain in Florida. These are different storms,” Spinrad said, noting the increasing intensity of hurricanes. “They’re massive storms. They’re slow. They’re powerful. Our ability to get the observations, build the models and make the predictions is becoming even more critical.” Full article at Rutgers Today

Researchers continue to advance hurricane science, leading to increased forecast accuracy and lead times As Superstorm Sandy approached the New Jersey coastline, a single Rutgers glider deployed off Tuckerton by hurricane scientists at Rutgers University Center for Ocean Observing Leadership, provided an ominous warning. The water mass known as the “Mid Atlantic cold pool”– an area of cool water off the coast that traditionally makes hurricanes less severe the further north they travel — mysteriously vanished from the New Jersey coast, eliminating one of state’s natural defenses against hurricanes. What followed was the second costliest tropical cyclone to impact the United States, which resulted in numerous lives lost because of Sandy’s high winds and catastrophic storm surges. The storm caused about $30 billion dollars’ worth of damage throughout New Jersey. Four days before Sandy made landfall, Travis Miles, then a doctoral degree student and now assistant professor of marine and coastal sciences, traveled 13 miles off the coast in rough seas to launch Glider RU23 – an ocean robot that can acquire data in the waves at the center of a hurricane and studies tropical storm intensification and ocean acidification, water temperature, depth, salinity and more – near the Rutgers University Marine Field Station. It was one of the first planned missions of its kind. Over the past decade, Rutgers robot research has helped change the field of oceanography and the way scientists understand extreme weather. In the last two weeks, gliders have been collecting information about Hurricane Ian off the coast of New Jersey as the storm traveled north after devastating parts of Florida. “As we watched Superstorm Sandy in 2012, it became more apparent it wasn’t weakening, at least not due to the ocean, the way Hurricane Irene did,” said Miles, a former graduate student of RU COOL cofounder Scott Glenn, who has been an integral part in developing a new generation of oceanographers. “All of the cold water we expected, similar to the year before, to weaken the storm wasn’t there. So we knew we had to track it.” Full article at Rutgers News

Rutgers climatologists across New Jersey and the world are preparing humans to live in a changing environment, as rising sea levels and extreme weather impact our ways of life. At Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, we are helping urban communities, suburban communities, rural communities, farming communities and shore communities live with today’s reality and prepare for tomorrow. Full video on Vimeo

Please join me in congratulating our students here at the International Oceans Meeting sponsored by the Marine Technology Society and the IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society. The student poster competition brings the top students among all the student papers submitted to the workshop to participate in a competition. Rutgers had 3 of the 26 finalists in the competition!!! Yes, I said 3!!!! Becca Horwitz (now working with Daphne and Travis) Courtney Dreyfus (Recent graduate of our masters in ocean observing program) Jackie Veatch (working with me). I am also very excited to report that Jackie Veatch was the winner of the competition.  Her poster, paper, and presentation was selected as the winner among an impressive set of scientific and engineering posters!! Jackie follows last year’s winner Schuyler Nardelli.  Impressive to have Rutgers students win consecutive competitions!! Congratulations!!

National 4-H’s signature program, the 4-H STEM Challenge, inspires youth around the country to take an interest in STEM topics and careers. This year’s challenge, designed by Rutgers University’s Cooperative Extension team, teaches kids how to use STEM to explore Earth’s Ocean and how it relates to all life on the planet. Explorers of the Deep is a collection of three activities that equips youth with skills across a broad range of topics, including ocean science, data interpretation, communication, physics, and aquaculture. Youth will apply their knowledge, creativity, and innovation to learn about science, technology, engineering and math topics through this year’s theme, which focuses on ocean exploration, marine science, and the connection between climate change and our ocean. The UN has recently endorsed an Ocean Decade activity submission for the 2022 STEM Challenge. The learning goals and efforts surrounding the STEM challenge are in accordance with the United Nation’s proclamation of a Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development to; “support efforts to reverse the cycle of decline in ocean health and gather ocean stakeholders worldwide behind a common framework that will ensure ocean science can fully support countries in creating improved conditions for sustainable development of the Ocean.” In addition, on Saturday, October 15, Rutgers Cooperative Extension teamed up with Cooperative Extension NYC 4-H at Cornell University to bring educators from across two states to the New York Aquarium and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), for an immersive full-day professional development (PD) experience. The educators were introduced to the STEM Challenge Explorers of the Deep through hands-on activity demonstrations of the Ocean Explorers Augmented Reality board game, Ocean Expedition with model ocean gliders, and Ocean Communicator activity. The PD workshop was an opportunity for educators to not only learn how to disseminate the kit in their communities, but a chance to apply the Ocean concepts to real world applications in content and displays experienced throughout the aquarium.

So have you ever wondered how meteorologists and weather forecasters predicted major storms weeks in advance? Well, ocean gliders that were originally used to help research ocean animals are now helping predict major storms. A group of professors at Rutgers University teamed up with workers at Orsted to help develop technology that will help determine weather patterns during hurricane season. Ocean gliders are used to help facilitate ocean modeling and storm forecasting these gliders, not only provide research about ocean animals but also measure sea temperatures is important when forecasting tropical storms. DC News Now sat down with a few members of the team to learn more about how this will change the way forecasters predict storms. “I was doing a mission. We said, well, let’s keep it out there. It doesn’t get seasick. You know, it’s going to collect data like we haven’t seen it and it really fundamentally changed the way that we look at the coupling between the ocean and the atmosphere. In the model,” Travis Miles, an Assistant Professor, with the Center for Ocean Observing Leadership at Rutgers University said. “Our main goal with them is to get improve our understanding of the intensity of hurricanes. So basically, the ocean is a heat engine,” Josh Kohut, a professor of Marine and Coastal Sciences, at Rutgers University mentioned. The company Ørsted decided to make its data public, submitting it to the NOAA’s Integrated Ocean Observing System and the Global Telecommunications System to support ocean modeling and storm forecasting. Original article at DC News Now

Congratulations to Lauren Cook on the successful defense of their thesis proposal!