Tag: Greg Foltz

Wind streaks and whitecaps on the ocean surface from Hurricane Edouard's 65 kt winds. Image credit: NOAA

Unlocking the ocean’s role driving hurricanes

Scientists at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory are now focusing on what happens where the sea meets the atmosphere to help solve the hurricane intensity problem. The place right above where the air meets the sea is called the planetary boundary layer. The ocean drives global weather. By building on past research, scientists have determined that factors in the boundary layer and underlying ocean such as salinity, temperature, currents, wave and wind patterns, precipitation, are crucial to understanding the energy that fuels a hurricane.

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Come Sail Away: Take a Look into a Scientist’s Life Aboard a 6 Week Cruise in the Tropical Atlantic

On February 24, researchers with NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory returned to land, docking in Key West after nearly six weeks aboard the NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown. The scientists were at sea for the PIRATA (Prediction and Research Moored Array in the Tropical Atlantic) Northeast Extension (PNE) cruise, a joint effort between AOML and NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory to maintain an expansion of the PIRATA array of surface moorings into the northern and northeastern sectors of the tropical Atlantic.

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The view of a sunset from the deck of the 2021 PIRATA cruise.

AOML and Fearless Fund Team Up to Tackle Questions of Sargassum’s Life Cycle for Better Inundation Prediction Capabilities

The PIRATA (Prediction and Research Moored Array in the Tropical Atlantic) 2021 cruise aboard NOAA’s Ronald H. Brown has returned home! During their 41 days at sea, the cruise facilitated a collaboration between researchers with NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Lab (AOML) and Fearless Fund, an organization dedicated to ocean solutions, supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). This collaboration targets the removal of carbon dioxide from ocean waters by the growth and harvest of seaweed biomass, known as Sargassum.

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AOML Scientists Tackle one of the Most Challenging Problems in U.S. Seasonal Rainfall Prediction

In a recent article published in Geophysical Research Letters, AOML and CIMAS scientists investigated U.S. rainfall variability, focusing on the late summer to mid-fall (August-October) season. The main goal of the study was to identify potential predictors of U.S. precipitation during August-October and to explore the underlying physical mechanisms.

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TACOS Program Hits 25,000th Profile Milestone!

TACOS has added 10 acoustic current meters to the Prediction and Research Moored Array in the Tropical Atlantic (PIRATA) buoy, moored at 4N, 23W.  Profile measurements are taken every 1-10 minutes, depending on depth.  Prior to the addition of the TACOS upper ocean observations in March 6, 2017 velocity profiles were only collected at this location during shipboard surveys.  These measurements are important because ocean currents influence temperature, salinity, and air-sea fluxes in the tropical North Atlantic, which affect weather, climate, and fisheries of the surrounding continents.

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Pirata Buoys on the back of the R/V Ronald H. Brown. Special thanks to the Crew of the Ronald H. Brown for capturing the Scientists at Sea. Photo Credit: NOAA.

An Enhanced PIRATA Data Set for Tropical Atlantic Ocean-Atmosphere Research

The manuscript “An enhanced PIRATA data set for tropical Atlantic ocean-atmosphere research”, by Greg Foltz, Claudia Schmid, and Rick Lumpkin, was accepted for publication in Journal of Climate. It describes a new set of daily time series (ePIRATA) that is based on the measurements from 17 moored buoys of the Prediction and Research Moored Array in the Tropical Atlantic (PIRATA).

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PIRATA Array

New Data Set to Improve Tropical Atlantic Ocean and Atmospheric Research

Researchers at NOAA AOML have released a new tropical Atlantic data set that includes several enhancements to improve data accuracy and data collection in the tropical Atlantic. The new data set is called enhanced PIRATA, or ePIRATA, and provides continuous records of upper-ocean temperature, salinity, and currents, together with meteorological data such as winds, humidity, and solar radiation. ePIRATA should prove valuable in better analyzing ocean and atmospheric processes in the tropical Atlantic.

PIRATA, the Prediction and Research Moored Array in the Tropical Atlantic, is a multinational observation network, established to improve knowledge and understanding of ocean-atmosphere variability in the tropical Atlantic. It is a joint project of Brazil, France and the United States of America, motivated by fundamental scientific issues and by societal needs for improved prediction of climate variability and its impact on the countries surrounding the tropical Atlantic basin. PIRATA provides measurements at 18 locations throughout the tropical Atlantic

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Composites of SST and surface wind anomalies for 21 canonical and 12 Modoki El Niño events running from the event peak in DJF to the following JJA. SST and wind vectors shown are significant at the 10% level based on a Student's one sample t test. Boxes in Figures 1a (1b) outline Niño-3 (El Niño Modoki) regions.Image Credit: NOAA AOML.

Impact of canonical and Modoki El Niño on tropical Atlantic SST

Results from research performed by Dillon Amaya, an undergraduate Hollings Scholar from Texas A&M University, were published recently in Journal of Geophysical Research. Dillon’s work was carried out in the Physical Oceanography Division of AOML during the summer of 2013 and focused on understanding the impacts of different types of El Niño events (“canonical” and “Modoki”) on sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic. The main result from the research is that Modoki El Niño;s fail to produce significant warming in the tropical North Atlantic, in contrast to the well known warming following canonical events.

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