A cutting-edge scientific drone was launched Wednesday morning, Jan. 3o, from Newport Harbor to assist with a University of Rhode Island study. While it may resemble a seven-meter-long sailboat, the unmanned surface vehicle will journey without a single crewmember on an important mission to better understand the role that the ocean plays in the Earth\u2019s climate.<\/p>\n
Last year, URI Graduate School of Oceanography Assistant Professor Jaime Palter<\/a> received a Saildrone<\/a> Award, which provides 30 days of data collection using one of the Alameda, California company\u2019s ocean drones. On Wednesday, the wind- and solar-powered drone left Newport Shipyard to gather data for Palter\u2019s research in the Gulf Stream.<\/p>\n Western boundary currents \u2013 fast-flowing, warm currents like the Gulf Stream that flow along the western sides of the world\u2019s ocean basins \u2013 are challenging environments for scientific observation. Understanding how these currents work is fundamental to understanding climate, so Palter will use the Saildrone to collect data not easily gathered by traditional means like research vessels and buoys. Specifically, Palter\u2019s mission is to better understand the transfer of heat between the Gulf Stream\u2019s waters and the atmosphere, as well as how much carbon is absorbed by the current.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Gulf Stream is only a few hundred miles from Rhode Island\u2019s shore, but even on cold winter days it has a surface temperature over 70 degrees Fahrenheit,\u201d said Palter. \u201cStorms moving west off of North America gain energy as they suck heat out of the current. These storms also prime the ocean to absorb carbon dioxide. Making ship-based observations under such stormy conditions has always been extraordinarily difficult, yet these are precisely the conditions we need to observe to understand the ocean carbon sink and its role in weather. The Saildrone will enable us to make these needed observations where they have been lacking in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n The Saildrone will be equipped with sensors to help study atmospheric and oceanographic data, including a new sensor \u2013 developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and funded for this mission by the National Science Foundation \u2013 to measure the exchange of carbon dioxide across the ocean\u2019s surface<\/p>\n \u201cNOAA designed an ingenious, self-calibrating sensor that has been incredibly successful at measuring the seawater concentration of carbon dioxide from the hull of the Saildrone,\u201d said Palter. \u201cAnother sensor on top of the drone measures carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Knowing the difference between the atmospheric and oceanic concentrations, along with the wind speed, also measured aboard the Saildrone, allows us to calculate the exchange of this gas between the ocean and atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n Saildrone technology provides scientists with safe access to remote areas or dangerous conditions, and the 30 days of free data collection provided by the company for Palter\u2019s mission is equivalent to an estimated $1 million worth of research ship time. However, the technology doesn’t replace the value of ocean-going research vessels, instead it is intended to fill in data collection gaps and can sample remote regions in any weather. As the robotic platform is relatively new, Palter and her collaborators will be aboard the R\/V Endeavor<\/em> following closely behind the drone during the last week of its mission, collecting the same measurements to verify the data that the drone gathers.<\/p>\n Saildrone technology is already being used by scientists across the globe, but the oceans remain largely unexplored and under sampled.<\/p>\n “Saildrone\u2019s long-term vision is to use autonomy to collect oceanic and atmospheric observations over extensive areas and extended periods of time,\u201d said Sebastien de Halleux, chief operating officer at Saildrone. \u201cWe are excited to partner with the University of Rhode Island\u2019s Graduate School of Oceanography on the launch of this important Atlantic mission and further the understanding of the critical role of the Gulf Stream.”<\/p>\n Palter\u2019s Gulf Stream mission is the first step toward a larger goal: using the new carbon dioxide sensor to collect measurements via Saildrone in the under sampled Western Boundary Currents in the South Atlantic and Pacific. Long considered carbon sinks \u2013 areas that can absorb large quantities of carbon dioxide \u2013 Palter says that these currents have potentially massive economic value, but our understanding of them remains poor.<\/p>\n \u201cExisting carbon budgets demand a Southern Hemisphere sink for human-caused carbon dioxide emissions of approximately 1 billion tons per year, more than 10 percent of global emissions,\u201d said Palter. \u201cConsidering that carbon taxes between $10 and $100 per ton have been implemented in some countries, this sink has an economic value in the tens to hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Yet we have major gaps in our understanding of where and how the carbon is absorbed, and how vulnerable these regions may be to future changes in ocean circulation and warming.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An ocean-going, wind-powered Saildrone will soon be gathering oceanic and atmospheric observations as its follows the Gulf Stream to support a GSO study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2165,"featured_media":136557,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[2060,747,1916,629,780,2370,316],"class_list":["post-136572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-climate","tag-climate-change","tag-jaime-palter","tag-national-science-foundation","tag-noaa","tag-ocean-basins","tag-physical-oceanography"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136572"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136596,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136572\/revisions\/136596"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/gso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}