Lab news and updates

Pictured: Jacki Long, Andrea Fassbender, William Haskell. Photo credit: Nora Cohen.

On May 23, we took a field trip to Saildrone to check out their facilities and learn more about autonomous surface vehicle applications.

On May 23, we took a field trip to Saildrone to check out their facilities and learn more about autonomous surface vehicle applications.

Photo credit: Saildrone

On January 30, a Saildrone equipped with NOAA PMEL CO2 instrumentation set off for the Gulf Stream as part of a project lead by Jaime Palter at URI to study air-sea heat and carbon fluxes in western boundary currents during winter.
A short feature article on biogeochemistry at the ocean meso and submesoscales is now published in Eos here.
A paper stemming from the 2018 NOAA Ocean Acidification PI meeting has been accepted for publication: Carter, B.R., Williams, N.L., Evans, W., Fassbender, A.J., Barbero, L., Hauri, C., Feely, R.A., and A.J. Sutton (2019). Timeof-emergence as a metric for prioritizing between climate observation quality, frequency, and duration. Geophysical Research Letters.
Research Technician Jacki Long participated in a cruise out of Bermuda meant to track a Saildrone measuring pCO2, pH, and oxygen while zigzagging across the Gulf Stream. The Saildrone was out for ~3 weeks in advance of the cruise and unfortunately experienced a catastrophic wing failure in 59 knot winds and 11m waves just one day before the cruise set sail. Bummer! Still, the science team collected underway pH and nitrate data from Dr. Yui Takeshita’s (MBARI) BGC SUMO system and conducted underway CTD casts to collect contextual data from the region.

University of Montana campus

Andrea visited Washington D.C. in December to participate in the OCB Synthesis and Intercomparison of Ocean Carbon Uptake in CMIP6 Models Workshop and gave a talk entitled Sensitivity of the ocean carbon sink to natural and anthropogenic carbon cycle interactions. She also gave a talk at AGU entitled A Modified Marine Carbon Cycle Under RCP8.5: Implications for Ocean Carbon Storage.
Andrea visited the University of Montana and gave a department seminar entitled: Chemical feedbacks in the climate system: A modified marine carbon cycle under business-as-usual carbon dioxide emissions
A new paper describing asymmetries in surface ocean pCO₂ and pH seasonal cycle amplification under RCP8.5 and what it could mean for future ocean carbon uptake is now published in final form here. The accompanying commentary by Ryan Woosley can be found here.
Andrea and Stu Bishop (NCSU) gave an invited webinar to the US CLIVAR Interagency Group on the recommendations for carbon cycle research in Western Boundary Current regions resulting from the 2017 Ocean Carbon Hot Spots Workshop at MBARI.
Jacqueline Long was honored with the Sackett Prize for her excellent Master’s researcher completed in the College of Marine Sciences at the University of South Florida. While in Florida, Jacki gave a department seminar entitled: Working toward a global PIC-ture of the biological carbon pump.