Category: Physical Oceanography

Image of seafoam at the ocean surface. Photo Credit: NOAA AOML.

2020 State of the Climate Report Shows Global Ocean Processes are Shifting

Today, August 25th, the 2020 State of the Climate report was released by the American Meteorological Society, showing 2020 to be one of the hottest years on record since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Even with environmental cooling factors, such as the transition from the El Niño of 2018-2019 to the La Niña of late 2020, global trends indicate the Earth is warming and sea level is rising. Throughout the report, environmental processes that influence climate and these warming trends are documented. 

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Keynotes April-June 2021

AOML’s newest issue of the Keynotes Newsletter is now live! This issue offers in-depth research highlights about new technology for the 2021 hurricane season, the ocean’s role in fueling hurricanes, new uses for Ship of Opportunity Data, new research on heat tolerant corals, eDNA and it’s connection to marine food webs, new sargassum tracking tools, recent publications, and more.

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Close up photo of Vibrio bacteria

Does the Risk of Vibrio Infection Increase in a Warming Planet?

In a recent study published in Lancet Planetary Health, Joaquin Trinanes, a scientist at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic Meteorological Laboratory (AOML), uses a new generation of climate, population, and socioeconomic projections to map future scenarios of distribution and season suitability for the pathogenic bacteria, Vibrio. For the first time, a global estimate of the population at risk of vibriosis for different time periods is provided.

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North Pacific storm waves as seen from the M/V NOBLE STAR. Ocean observations are an important component of the 2023 Hurricane Field Program Photo credit: NWS

Ocean Observations Collected Ahead of Atlantic Tropical Storm Claudette

The 2021 hurricane season is off to a busy start with five named storms having already formed in the Atlantic Ocean. Recently, Tropical Storm Claudette travelled directly over three ocean observation platforms, providing key ocean data for the initialization of the ocean component for hurricane forecast models.

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RV Endeavor as viewed from a small boat. Image credit: NOAA

AOML Researchers Monitor Important Boundary Currents in the North Atlantic Ocean Through Direct Measurements at Sea

Researchers from the Physical Oceanography Division of AOML conduct regular hydrographic surveys to monitor the western boundary current system in the subtropical North Atlantic Ocean. These cruises are a part of the laboratory’s long-running Western Boundary Time Series (WBTS) project and are designed to monitor both the Florida Current, east of Florida in the Florida Straits, and the North Atlantic Deep Western Boundary Current east of the Bahamas in the North Atlantic Ocean. These western boundary currents are important parts of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).

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Satellite image of Hurricane Micheal. Image Credit, NOAA.

Ocean Conditions Played a Major Role in the Intensification of Hurricane Michael (2018)

In a recent study published in AGU’s Journal of Geophysical Research – Oceans, scientists at AOML identified key ocean features that supported the rapid intensification of Hurricane Michael (2018), despite unfavorable atmospheric conditions for development. The study demonstrates the importance of using realistic ocean conditions for coupled (ocean-atmosphere) hurricane models in order to achieve the most accurate hurricane intensity forecasts.

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A large orange/red saildrone floats in the ocean

Ocean Drones Brave Hurricanes to Make Coastal Communities Safer

Saildrone is announcing a new mission to deploy five uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) from the US Virgin Islands in August to gather key data throughout the 2021 Tropical Atlantic hurricane season. The USVs will be equipped with specially designed “hurricane wings” to enable them to operate in extreme conditions. Saildrones are the only USVs capable of collecting this data and are designed to withstand winds over 70 mph and waves over 10 feet, which occur during a hurricane weather system. The five saildrones will sail into the paths of hurricanes to provide valuable real-time observations for numerical hurricane prediction models and to collect new insights into how these large and destructive weather cells grow and intensify.

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A phytoplankton bloom in the Atlantic Ocean. May 2016

BGC Argo Floats Provide First Year-Round Net Primary Production Estimates for the Western North Atlantic

Phytoplankton drifting near the ocean surface play a critical role in marine biogeochemistry, carbon cycling, and ecosystem health. But measuring the activity of these microscopic organisms is challenging. Although scientists rely on ship-based sampling and satellites to quantify their abundance, both methods have limitations. In a study published recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Biogeosciences,* Argo profiling floats equipped with biogeochemical sensors, i.e., BGC Argo floats, were used to obtain the first year-long estimates of phytoplankton in the western North Atlantic Ocean.

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AOML Scientists Develop First-ever Daily Estimates of the Heat Transport in the South Atlantic Ocean

In a recent article published in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Oceans, scientists at AOML evaluate the variability of the heat transport in the South Atlantic by developing a new method to measure its changes on a daily basis. This study presents, for the first time, full‐depth, daily measurements of the volume and heat transported by the Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) in the South Atlantic at 34.5°S based on direct observations.

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