Deputy NOAA Administrator Vice Admiral Manson Brown Visits AOML
VADM Brown took a tour of AOML and the Southeast Fisheries Science Center on March 15th to learn about current research and addressed staff during a town hall session.
NOAA and Cuba Open Doors to Marine Science Cooperation
When Barack Obama becomes the first president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge, his visit will highlight not only a new course in international relations, but showcase on-going scientific opportunities with the country only 90 miles off the Florida coast.
New Antenna System Design Improves Reliability and Significantly Reduces Cost
Scientists and engineers from NOAA have successfully designed, built, and tested a new antenna system that dramatically increases data transmission reliability while drastically reducing operating costs. The new Iridium-based transmission system, developed by NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) & the Cooperative Institute for Marine & Atmospheric Studies (CIMAS), has no restrictions on data format or size, allowing data from various ocean and land-based observation platforms to be transmitted more securely and at a fraction of the cost of the older Inmarsat-C platform.
AOML Engages Local Students in STEM Activities for National Labs Week
On Friday, March 4th, AOML hosted 35 students from Miami’s Booker T. Washington High School for the Obama Administration’s My Brother’s Keeper National Labs Week. This national event is designed to introduce students from communities that are not well represented in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) careers to federal employees and lab facilities in the hopes of inspiring interest in these fields.
Coral Scientists Replace Instrumentation for Ongoing Coral Bleaching Study
From March 1st through March 3rd, AOML coral scientists traveled to reefs in the Upper and Lower Florida Keys to swap out instruments being used for an ongoing coral bleaching study. Both pH and light loggers were collected and deployed at inshore and offshore study sites.
AOML Participates in El Niño Rapid Response Campaign
AOML hurricane researcher Jason Dunion participated in NOAA’s El Niño Rapid Response Field Campaign, a comprehensive land, sea, and air sampling effort in the tropical Pacific, to study the current El Niño and improve weather forecasts thousands of miles away.
Meridional heat transport in the South Atlantic reveals links with global monsoons
A recent paper published in the Journal of Climate led by PHOD researchers Hosmay Lopez, Shenfu Dong, Sang-Ki Lee, and Gustavo Goni provides a physical mechanism on how low frequency variability of the South Atlantic Meridional Heat Transport (SAMHT) associated with the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation ( AMOC) may influence decadal variability of atmospheric circulation and monsoons. This is the first attempt to link the South Atlantic Overturning Circulation variability to weather and climate.
February 2016 Western Boundary Time Series Cruise
AOML researchers completed a Western Boundary Times Series cruise in February aboard the UNOLS Ship R/V Endeavor. The AOML team was supported by additional crew from the University of Puerto Rico.
AOML Hosts Young Scientists on Take Your Child To Work Day
On February 5, 2016, AOML was a proud participant in the annual ‘Take Your Child to Work Day’ tradition. This year’s theme focused on the global ocean observing system, a network of ocean buoys and drifters to which AOML contributes to, that collects vital data on the world’s oceans.
Dominance of the Geostrophic and Ekman Transports on the MOC in the South Atlantic
The Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) plays a critical role in global and regional heat and freshwater budgets. Recent studies have suggested the possibility of a southern origin of the anomalous MOC and meridional heat transport (MHT) in the Atlantic, through changes in the transport of warm/salty waters from the Indian Ocean into the South Atlantic basin. This possibility clearly manifests the importance of understanding the South Atlantic MOC (SAMOC). Observations in the South Atlantic have been historically sparse both in space and time compared to the North Atlantic. To enhance our understanding of the MOC and MHT variability in the South Atlantic, a new methodology is recently published to estimate the MOC/MHT by combining sea surface height measurements from satellite altimetry and in situ measurements (Dong et al., 2015).