Award: OCE-1633125

The major goals of the award have been to continue the core hydrographic measurements as part of the Hydrostation S sustained time-series program. The Hydrostation S site (formerly known as the Panulirus site) is located ~25 km southeast of Bermuda at 32o 10'N, 64o 30'W and arguably the longest sustained open-ocean hydrographic station in the world. Prof. Nick Bates and Dr. Rod Johnson have been Principal Investigators of the Hydrostation S Program and the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) since 2012 with major involvement in both of these sustained time-series since 1990 and 1988, respectively. The Hydrostation S project has been designed to address the overarching hypothesis that the physical properties of the upper-ocean to deep-ocean are changing in concerted with natural and anthropogenically influenced physical forcing. Sustained observations of the ocean, such as those from Hydrostation S, remain critically important to establish rates of change to provide quantitative empirical data for myriad regional and global ocean synthesis and modeling of ocean processes and future ocean change. Hydrostation S program and its data are considered as a service to the community as a whole, being openly distributed and subsequently have been an invaluable resource in understanding processes and patterns of variability in the ocean, as well as education, mentorship and outreach activities. Research findings from Hydrostation S represent shipboard observations made in the deep Sargasso Sea offshore of the island of Bermuda and span nearly seventy years. As a summary of the research findings of the Hydrostation S program, the subtropical ocean of the North Atlantic Ocean has got warmer (+1.2C) and saltier (salinification; +0.11), lost oxygen (ocean deoxygenation, ODO; loss of 8% over past forty years), and gained carbon dioxide (CO2) with ocean acidification (OA) impacts increasing, and in the recent decade, these changes have accelerated. These trends of warming and salinification have increased in the 2020s. Last Modified: 01/29/2024 Submitted by: NicholasRBates