Journalist At Sea!
Nicole Estaphan, a professional journalist embedded on the R/V Atlantis, writes: "We woke up bright and early Friday morning to watch land disappear. How many times does someone get to say that in their lifetime? Well, if you are a science at sea guy or gal you probably get that thrill a bunch. For a journalist who, until yesterday, didn't even know this opportunity existed it was thrilling. Like with everything in life sometimes the hardest part of the adventure is letting go of the dock and swimming away from safe harbor...Over the next 26 days I hope to introduce you to the brilliant minds behind the research, explain how a floating lab works and try to figure out how exactly one showers on a rocking boat.” Read more and follow her adventures online at http://www.journalistatsea.com/.

The NAAMES study area in the North Atlantic captures both the seasonal variability as well as the meridional gradient of phytoplankton productivity as shown in the figure above, where the ship cruise track in red is superimposed over a map of the ocean chlorophyll concentration. It is this wide range in both temporal and spatial ecosystem variability that makes the North Atlantic an ideal place to study how changes in ocean ecosystems affect the annual phytoplankton cycle as well as the sea-air exchange of aerosols and trace gases that may influence clouds and climate.

Photo Credit: NASA/Rich Moore
The NASA Wallops Flight Facility C-130 Hercules aircraft is outfitted with a state-of-the-art suite of in situ and remote sensing instruments to measure ocean ecosystem properties, as well as the aerosols, clouds, and trace gases in the atmosphere above. Based out of St. John’s International Airport in Newfoundland, Canada, the “Herc” flies eastward to rendezvous with and overfly the UNOLS R/V Atlantis global-class ship sampling the plankton ecosystem conditions in the remote North Atlantic waters. NAAMES scientists use this flying laboratory to understand how ocean-aerosol-cloud properties vary over wide spatial scales relevant for satellite-borne remote sensing instruments.

Credit: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
The UNOLS Research Vessel Atlantis is a global-class floating laboratory with a complement of 5 crew and 34 scientists to operate a variety of in situ and optical ocean instrumentation, as well as aerosol and trace gas measurements situated in vans on the fore deck. Atlantis departs out of Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA, and heads east into the North Atlantic for an approximately 26 day research cruise. The critical portion of this cruise is a 14-day window at 40°W longitude and spanning 40 to 57°N latitude, where the ship will make daily castings at sunrise and noon to measure the vertical distribution of the ocean composition and continuous ocean, aerosol, and trace gas measurements while the ship is underway. The high-resolution, surface and sub-surface data provided by the ship measurements link directly to the high-spatial scale observations provided from the aircraft and from satellites.

Credit: Welch Mechanical Designs
This drawing shows the layout of the three remote sensing instruments mounted in the 55-inch, downward-facing, portal of the NASA Wallops Flight Facility C-130. The forward direction of flight is indicated by the white arrow. The 55-inch portal is a unique attribute of this C-130 flying laboratory, which enables NAAMES to characterize the ocean and atmosphere with unprecedented resolution via these state-of-the-art sensors: the NASA LaRC High-Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL), the NASA GSFC GEO-CAPE Airborne Simulator (GCAS), and the NASA GISS Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP).

Credit: NOAA Global Drifter Program
As the ship completes the north-south portion of its cruise, NAAMES scientists will deploy Lagrangian surface drifters like the one shown above in order to keep track of where the water mass travels throughout the study period. In essence, we’re leaving a trail of breadcrumbs of where the ship has sailed so that the aircraft can overfly these same waters days or weeks later to see how the ocean ecosystem has changed since it was observed by the comprehensive suite of ship-based ocean sensors. Shown in the image is a red and white surface float containing the GPS transmitter that is tethered to the green, holey-sock drogue. The drogue extends 1-15 meters below the ocean surface and ensures that the drifter moves with the prevailing water currents rather than being blown around by the wind.