American and European scientists are deploying dozens of autonomous and remotely-piloted instrument platforms to capture simultaneous observations of the lower atmosphere and the upper ocean offshore of Barbados with unprecedented detail.
Editor's note: Air & Sea Chronicles, NOAA's blog series documenting the ATOMIC mission in Barbados, kicks off today with the first blog from Janet Intrieri, a research scientist from NOAA's Earth System Research Lab Physical Sciences Division, who reports on the first days of the mission aboard NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown.
Picture a calm, sunny day at a tropical beach. You look out at the ocean and in the distance a flotilla of small white clouds sails close to the waves. It’s ideal weather and typical of many days in the tropical Atlantic. However, scientists don’t fully understand how these ubiquitous clouds (a type of “shallow convective cloud”) form and impact the ocean, and it represents one of the largest uncertainties in predicting climate change.
New research by NOAA and a visiting scientist from India shows that warming of the Indo-Pacific Ocean is altering rainfall patterns from the tropics to the United States, contributing to declines in rainfall on the United States west and east coasts.
First data to be published from experimental drone flights into hurricane eyewalls demonstrates value for improving models.
It’s no surprise that an agency of scientists working to create better weather forecasts, manage ocean resources and monitor the environment would have a healthy share of inventors.
“Whenever we visit NOAA labs we find a new invention,” said Derek Parks, the acting deputy director of the NOAA Technology Partnerships Office.