Robotic Floats Will Collect New Data On How Climate Change Is Affecting Our Oceans

Speaker 1: 00:00 Scripps institution of oceanography as part of a consortium of the country's top ocean research institutions that will deploy 500 new robotic floats in the ocean to collect data about what is going on under the surface. As the planet warms, we know how global climate change is affecting us on land with more powerful storms and floods and wildfires, but studies of how global warming is affecting the deep ocean are equally important. And this new initiative funded with $53 million from the national science foundation could help to transform our understanding of the changes affecting our whole Marine ecosystem. As part of the KPBS climate change desk. Joining us is script's institutions lead scientists on this project. Lin tally Lynn, welcome to midday. Oh, glad to be here. So no scripts institution was one of the very first scientific institutions in the world to show the planet was warming when Walter monk took those ocean readings decades and decades ago. And since then, there are literally thousands of floating monitors already in place. How is this project taking things a bit further? Speaker 2: 01:04 Yeah. So those floating monitors are measuring its temperature and also salinity these new instruments that will deploy all over the world will measure things like acidity, the pH, uh, nitrate, which is a nutrient. You need nutrients to live and oxygen, uh, which is out there. And we'll also be able to measure how much biomass there is. We'll be looking at chlorophyll and particles. So it takes us to the ecosystem and health of the ocean. In addition to what we've already been measuring for heat. Why exactly is that significant? Well, the ocean is 70 odd percent of our planet. Isn't it? It's just a huge engine for the way the, the whole earth works, uh, for its ecosystem and its health. As we pump more and more CO2 into the atmosphere, a fraction of that goes into the ocean. Um, it's about a quarter to a third of it. And the ocean is, is, uh, uh, you could think of it as a great sewer for the extra carbon dioxide, but as that goes into the ocean, it makes it more acidic. And that has a major consequence for the biology. That's out there at the oceans, a little bit more acidic and a little bit warmer. It really interferes with the ecosystem. Speaker 1: 02:18 How deep will these robots be positioned? Where, where will you put them? Speaker 2: 02:23 Well, they're um, they go up and down. Um, every 10 days they go from 2000 meters. Let's see that's about 6,000 feet down up to the surface. So it's about half the ocean depth. So that's just like the array that's out there to do heat right now. This adds in basically one fourth of those floats will have these extra sensors. So it's, it's the upper half of the ocean. Speaker 1: 02:46 Are they attached to the bottom? How come they can stay in one place? Speaker 2: 02:50 Oh, they're, ballasted carefully. They don't stay in one place. They move on there. They drift around with the currents and they basically are at one kilometer down. And, uh, they move along for nine days or so. And then at the end of the nine days, they go down to two kilometers and then up to the surface and, uh, it's that profile from two kilometers to the surface that we really are looking at. And then they broadcast their data through the satellite. So we get their position and all the data, and then they go back down again, back down one kilometer deep and just drift along. So we also get sort of a measure of what the currents are at a thousand meters down at down a kilometer down as they drift. And in some places they move really fast in some place. They just sit there for years. Speaker 1: 03:36 Cool. So now who gets this data and what do they do with it? What data Speaker 2: 03:41 It's all public. Um, it comes up through our data management system. Um, we apply some corrections and it heads on over to NOAA, the national oceanic and atmospheric administration, and they handle data management for the U S fleet of these fleet of floats. Um, and there's an international organization too. Um, this is an international observing system and everybody can have the data. And so the data coming out now, they've been coming out for 15 years of temperature and salinity are used by a lot of different, um, groups. Um, it's an amazing, huge resource for heat and solidity. It goes into all of the computer models that do a weather and climate prediction, forecasting, et cetera. These new measurements will be matching with the NASA color satellites that look at how much chlorophyll is out in different parts of the world. Expect that fishermen, the industry will be out there grabbing the data as soon as it comes off. Speaker 1: 04:39 And I understand that some schools can, can join in the monitoring and adoptive float. How will that work? Speaker 2: 04:45 Yes. Uh, so we've been doing this now as a pilot project in the Southern ocean for the last five, six years. And each of our floats has gone in with a school that's adopted the float. We have curriculum, you can attach a cool name to the float. One of them is like Teeter Todd, or you can have one at named after your favorite teacher or whoever and the group that's at sea, putting the floats in. There's always somebody out there who just loves to take your drawings from your class and they'll transfer them over to the float and your float gets pictures and it goes down. And then we're in, we're in contact with the, with your teacher and your class, uh, through the whole process. And then you can, um, follow your float for years, uh, get the data off and graph it up and use it for science if science fair science projects in class. And when Speaker 1: 05:33 Will this project actually begin well, Speaker 2: 05:36 Um, we're hoping that the, for this brand new increment, um, the large global increment, uh, we'll be deploying putting our first floats into the ocean, probably around hopefully March or April. Next year, we have to order and start ordering all the parts and putting the floats together. There are some bits and pieces to get on, and then we'll be in full production by the end of the year. So we'll be putting out about a hundred floats a year, all over the world, different different research cruises everywhere. Speaker 1: 06:07 Cool. We've been speaking with Lynn tally, who is one of the co-principal investigators of the global ocean biogeochemistry project. Then thanks so much. Speaker 2: 06:16 You're very welcome.