Project: Collaborative Research: Investigating meso- and submeso-scale variability in air-sea CO2 exchange in the Gulf Stream region with autonomous platforms

NSF Award Abstract:
The Gulf Stream current in the North Atlantic Ocean transports a large amount of warm water from south to north. Much of this heat is lost to the atmosphere as cold winds blow over the ocean. This heat loss causes local changes in the solubility of carbon dioxide in seawater and increases mixing of the upper ocean. Both of these impacts affect the ocean's ability to take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Knowledge of the ocean's carbon uptake in this region is important for our ability to understand and predict the global carbon cycle that determines atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Conditions in the Gulf Stream region change rapidly and are hard to sample, however. In this project, investigators will deploy a robotic glider for several weeks to measure temperature and salinity in the upper 1000 meters of the Gulf Stream region. The glider will overlap with other robotic vehicles called Saildrones that take measurements of surface waters and the atmosphere. Together these vehicles will produce a picture of ocean conditions and carbon uptake that is not possible with short-term sampling from ships. This project will support an early career scientist, a postdoctoral scholar, and a graduate student.

In this project, the Principal Investigators (PIs) will deploy one autonomous glider during the late spring-early summer of 2022 that will measure subsurface ocean properties in upper 1000 m of the Gulf Stream region. This glider will target the waters around three Saildrones that are deployed in this area through an independent project funded by Google.org. Uncrewed surface vehicles such as Saildrone autonomously measure surface oceanic and atmospheric variables at high temporal resolution but generally lack subsurface observations. The water column data from the glider and the surface data from the Saildrones will allow the PIs to test the effectiveness of the synergy of the glider-Saildrone combination as a method to holistically characterize the ocean variability on the scale of tens of kilometers.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.