What's New Archive
Image of sea ice in the Chukchi Sea captured during NOAA Twin Otter Flight in June 2016.
A recent perspective piece in Nature Climate Change by Jim Overland at PMEL and other scientists discusses the latest research on whether Arctic warming is fueling more severe winter weather in the mid-latitudes, the temperate zone of the Earth between the tropics and the Arctic, and the part of the United States where most Americans live.
Research conducted by a diverse, international group of scientists agree for the first time that the pattern of severe cold winters in the mid-latitudes is primarily based on the state of the jet stream, which is naturally variable. They also emphasize community coordination for both scientific progress and communication to a broader public. The group of researchers also agreed that there is no simple cause-and-effect relationship between a warming Arctic and an emerging pattern of severe winter weather in the mid-latitudes. It’s much more complicated, with different connections in different regions and under different background climate conditions.
Read the perspective piece here as well a Q&A with Jim Overland here.
Dr. Chidong Zhang has recently joined PMEL as our new Ocean Climate Research Division leader. He comes from the University of Miami where he’s been a professor at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. He brings with him expertise in large-scale air-sea interaction and atmospheric dynamics in the tropics. His special research interests include the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), ITCZ, African monsoon, and air-sea interaction.
He is an active member in the American Meteorology Society and the American Geophysical Union. He also serves as a co-chair of the Science Steering Committee of Years of the Maritime Continent (YCM) and is the editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres. He has mentored several graduate students and postdoctoral associates and will continue to do so while at PMEL through the University of Miami and the University of Washington’s Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean.
We are very excited to have Chidong join us. Welcome!
This map shows the water density (σt = density–1000 kg/m3) and surface currents (black arrows) on the eastern Bering Sea continental shelf as determined from measurements of the ocean temperature and salinity. White arrows show the total transport (1 Sv=106 m3/s) of water across sections S1-S4.
In the summers of 2008–2010, Dr. Ned Cokelet added rugged instruments to NOAA bottom trawl survey nets on the eastern Bering Sea continental shelf – site of the nation’s most productive fisheries – to measure ocean temperature and salinity at over 350 locations. The results, released in Deep Sea Research II, provide the most comprehensive view to date of the three-dimensional thermohaline structure. Horizontal variations of the ocean’s mass density, computed from the temperature and salinity measurements, give the ocean currents shown by arrows in the accompanying figure for summer 2010. The flow was strongest west of the Pribilof and St. Matthew Islands, and there was clockwise circulation around St. Matthew Island. The upper layer of the ocean was mixed down to less than 30 m over much of the region, but reached depths greater than 70 m along the Alaska Peninsula. Upper-to-lower layer salinity differences contributed more than temperature to density differences over most of the region. These observations enhance our understanding of plankton and fish-larval transport and can serve to calibrate predictive computer models of the ecosystem.
The PMEL Arctic Heat research team, including cooperative institute (JISAO) scientists, in front of NOAA Twin Otter during the first flight in June. From left to right: LT Alex Johnston, co-pilot; Dr Kevin Wood, lead scientist; LT Shanae Coker, aircraft commander; Leah Chomiak, Hollings Scholar; Alex Ekholm, WHOI engineer; Jeff Smith, scientific systems engineer.
September 10 – 20: The Arctic Heat Team has been making their way from Barrow, AK to Kotzebue on a specially-outfitted NOAA Twin Otter aircraft. Over the 10 day mission, the team is launching traditional atmospheric and oceanographic probes as well as the experimental Air-Launched Autonomous Micro-Observer (ALAMO) floats into the Chukchi Sea. Four ALAMO floats were deployed in June 2016 in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. These floats will continue to collect data on upper ocean temperatures throughout the year.
The team on this mission includes: Kevin Wood and Nick Bond from UW/JISAO and NOAA/PMEL, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s engineer Alex Ekholm, and LTJG Kevin Doremus as the Aircraft Commander.
Watch a video of the team launching various floats during the first deployments on YouTube.
The saildrones as they make their way to Dutch Harbor, AK for recovery. Photo Credit: Saildrone, Inc.
On September 3, after three months of collecting data in the Bering Sea, the two Saildrones have been safely recovered. The Saildrones each traveled almost 3000 nautical miles in 101 days. After arriving in Dutch Harbor, AK, the Saildrones were packed into a container and shipped to their home base in San Francisco, CA. Data from the tested technologies for fish and marine mammal acoustics are expected mid-September with preliminary analysis completed around the New Year.
This was a collaborative mission between the Pacific Marine Environmental Lab, Alaska Fisheries Science Center, Saildrone, Inc., Simrad AS/Kongsberg Maritime, Greeneridge Sciences, Inc, and Wildlife Computers.
Continue to follow the Saildrone on the Innovative Technology for Arctic Exploration page to learn more about upcoming events and preliminary results in the weeks and months to come.
Path of Tropical Storm Lionrock, as it passed the NOAA KEO mooring, and makes it way toward Japan. Storm track image from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.
As residents in Japan prepare for Tropical Storm Lionrock today, August 30, scientists at NOAA and the University of Washington’s Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO) study the behavior of the storm. Lionrock is expected to make landfall across northern Japan, affecting many highly populated areas, including Fukushima and other areas impacted by the 2011 tsunami.
With funding awarded for research after Super Storm Sandy caused massive damage to the east coast of the US, NOAA and JISAO scientists aim to improve storm track models to better predict where storms will go, and how powerful they might become. To achieve this, they are using data from the NOAA Kuroshio Extension Observatory (KEO), along with model simulations performed at NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center.
KEO is a moored buoy, located off the coast of Japan, where it is frequently in the path of storms and tropical cyclones. When Lionrock passed over KEO on Monday August 29, wind gusts were recorded at over 81mph, and storm-induced currents approached 3 knots, some of the highest ever recorded at the site. These data, along with other measurements of the ocean state, both before and after the passage of the storm, will be valuable tools in assessing, and ultimately improving, storm prediction models.
Top pair of floats going in as Full Ocean Depth Hydrophone is being deployed on July 28, 2015. Photo credit: Oregon State University
PMEL’s Acoustics Program is the focus of the first of three videos that will appear in Ocean Today Kiosks. Listen to Bob Dziak, Haru Matsumoto and Joe Haxel talk about their work at Challenger Deep. In the summer of 2015, PMEL and CIMRS scientists set out to Challenger Deep to record ambient noise at the deepest known location in Earth’s oceans. What they heard, surprised them all. Watch the video on YouTube. This video was produced by 77th Parallel Productions and Jesse Crowell.
Read more about their findings here and learn more about the Acoustic Program.
Landscape of Change by Jill Pelto. The cover image of the report reflects the connections between sea level rise, glacier volume decline, increasing global temperatures, and the increasing use of fossil fuels. These data lines compose a landscape shaped by the changing climate.
The State of the Climate in 2015 report, published August 2016 in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, provides a detailed update on global climate indicators, notable weather events and other environmental data. The report was compiled by 460 scientists, including several PMEL, JISAO and JIMAR scientists. These scientists contributed to sections on the global ocean carbon cycle, ocean heat content and arctic air temperature.
This year’s report has an emphasis on ecosystems, specifically how a changing climate impacts living systems. The report confirmed that 2015 beat 2014 as the warmest year (about 1.0°C warmer) since preindustrial times and that the Mauna Loa observatory recorded its first annual mean carbon dioxide concentration greater than 400 ppm. This year’s exceptional warmth was fueled in part by a nearly year-round mature El Niño event.
Greg Johnson, who co-edited the Global Ocean’s chapter, wrote a haiku summarizing Earth’s climate in 2015:
El Niño waxes,
warm waters shoal, flow eastward,
Earth’s fever rises.
Read the full report, press release and report highlights.
The NOAA Ocean Station Papa mooring (center) in the Gulf of Alaska is surrounded by other research platforms, including the OOI Profiler and Flanking moorings.
The June 2016 deployment of the NOAA Papa mooring in the Gulf of Alaska was accomplished aboard the CCGS John P. Tully, in partnership with Canada’s Institute of Ocean Sciences, Department of Fisheries and Oceans Line P Program. These long time project partners have been providing ship time and assistance servicing the NOAA Papa mooring since it was first deployed in 2007. This year, for the first time in nine years, conditions prevented the recovery of the NOAA mooring that had been deployed in 2015.
That mooring was instead recovered aboard the NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown, which was working in the same area for Ocean Observing Initiative (OOI) operations, just weeks after the Tully cruise. Though the work schedule was shortened due to unforeseen issues, the ship was still able to accomplish all of their planned work, as well as the recovery of the NOAA Papa mooring.
Thanks to the captain and crew of Brown, members of the WHOI mooring group, and Oregon State University OOI technicians, who made the recovery operations a success. Grateful thanks also go to the chief scientist of the cruise, Dr. Ed Dever, who coordinated with NOAA and the NSF cruise sponsor to make this recovery possible. Continued thanks to the Line P Program for their ongoing support of the NOAA mooring operations.
Principal investigators at the Arctic IERP meeting in Anchorage, AL.
PMEL scientists from the Ecosystems and Fisheries Oceanography Coordinated Investigations (EcoFOCI) program attended the first Principal Investigator meeting for the North Pacific Research Board (NPRB)’s five-year Arctic Integrated Ecosystem Research Program (Arctic IERP) in Anchorage, Alaska on June 20-23.
This historic Arctic Integrated Ecosystem Research Program will study the northern Bering and Chukchi Seas during spring through fall to better understand how changes in physical environmental drivers influence the structure and function of the biological system and access to subsistence resources. The EcoFOCI team (comprised of PMEL, AFSC, JISAO, and Bigelow Laboratory scientists) will lead the Oceanography and Lower Trophic Level Productivity portion of the program under the direction of Carol Ladd. The field seasons for this project are planned to begin in spring 2017 through the fall of 2019.
The goals of the meeting were to introduce the funded projects, discuss how these projects are connected, identify any gaps, come to a consensus on the overarching hypothesis for the integrated research, introduce PI's from other Arctic projects that may integrate with the Arctic IERP research, and discuss the framework for integration, data management, and communication/outreach during the project.