The influences of ocean conditions and currents on living environments are now more widely appreciated—from the Earth’s climate and severe weather conditions to fisheries and biodiversity. Sustained and wide-spread measurements are needed to provide essential clues for understanding the oceans, for effective monitoring of environmental changes, and for helping to clarify the long-term effects of global warming. To meet this challenge, ocean re-searchers have invented various types of unmanned observing platforms. Two variants developed and supplied by Teledyne Webb Research are gliders for measuring upper-ocean waters and profiling floats for observing global circulation. These platforms, which support a growing range of applications, have been especially valuable for measuring the challenging waters beneath severe storms. Original Article  

Students from Brooklyn’s School for Human Rights visited the COOLroom and glider lab today. Discussions ranged from our current work at Palmer Station in Antarctica studying penguin populations, to more local research of offshore wind turbine planning, whale migration tracking and what’s happening just off the beaches of Brooklyn. We hope to see you again next year.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) recently completed an independent validation study of the performance of the RUCOOL real-time weather model (RU-WRF) that is used for wind resource assessment work. Their study evaluated the input data and parameters used by the RU-WRF model, including RUCOOL’s innovative Coldest Dark Pixel sea surface temperature product, and compared it to other model forcing data and model setups, including a setup that mirrors the NREL WIND Toolkit. In particular, they found that the planetary boundary layer scheme used in RU-WRF was more accurate for offshore wind resource modeling, particularly when upgrading the underlying version of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to version 4.0. Additionally, they found that the coldest pixel SST product was more accurate than other widely used SST products for this region, which helped to provide improvements in model accuracy. More information on the model, including model output, is available on the RU-WRF Model page. The full report can be found through NREL. Support for RU-WRF and the validation study has been provided by the State of New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.

The technology used to observe ocean acidification – the shift in ocean chemistry driven by an increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities – has followed the same trend of innovation and scaling as computer technology. Measuring ocean chemistry traditionally involves a team of scientists to collect samples at sea and an entire lab team to analytically determine the carbonate chemistry by measuring multiple parameters, including pH. While these methods are still being used, innovations in technology have made continuous pH sampling in our ocean possible. Dr. Grace Saba, an assistant professor at Rutgers University, has worked to develop a new sensor and is leading a project that will combine this new technology, existing data, and modeling to optimize the ocean acidification observing network in the Northeast US. Read more

The Palmer Station Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program is focused on conducting a long term study on the warming West Antarctica Peninsula. For 30 years this project has been documenting how melting glaciers and reduced sea ice are altering the marine food web spanning from plankton to penguins.  The project consists of 6 month surveys at Palmer Station sampling over seasonal scales and a month long ship expedition surveying a spatial area the size of Oklahoma. The cruise for 2020 is just being completed, marking the end of the field season.  The team surveyed sea ice regions in the South to warmer locations to the north.  The multi-University effort samples the ocean physics, chemistry, bacteria, phytoplankton, zooplankton, sea birds, and whales.  The data collected will be synthesized for the rest of the year.  This was a particularly warm ocean year, with a warm atmosphere, significant rain, and several gale-force storms. Despite the weather, the researchers accomplished all the goals that had been set by the science team.  Prof. Oscar Schofield acted as Chief scientist for the effort, and was accompanied by Dr. Steve Ackleson (Naval Research Laboratory), two Rutgers graduate students (Jacqueline Veatch and Quintin DiouCass) and two Rutgers undergraduates (Gabrielle Rosenthal and Laura Wiltsee).  Science research continues at Palmer Station through March, so there will be more updates to come from the LTER and Josh Kohut’s efforts with Project Swarm.

Dr. Hugh Roarty visited with Dr. Erick Fredj from Jerusalem College of Technology in Jerusalem Israel from January 27-31, 2020.  Dr. Fredj has been a longtime collaborator with Rutgers University.  Dr. Roarty and Dr. Fredj discussed the state of the art for measuring and quantifying oceanic surface transport in the Mid Atlantic Bight.  They plan on conducting an experiment this coming summer looking to measure ocean dispersion with drifters and High Frequency radar.

Rutgers Assistant Professor Travis Miles is currently onboard the Tethys II, a French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Ifremer vessel, on a collaborative project with Lead scientist François Bourrin from the University of Perpignan. The project is focused on sampling particle fluxes and the dynamics of the Rhone River in the Gulf of Lions along the southern coast of France. In this project they deployed a Teledyne-Webb Slocum glider operated by CNRS with an integrated Sequoia Scientific LISST particle size and concentration sensor. The first cruise lasts 5 days with a second cruise planned for late February. The glider will remain deployed between research cruises to sample longer duration processes including the influence of coastal storms on water column properties. The Ifremer/Rutgers teams have made the data from the glider, called Crate, are available through the Rutgers glider pages.