The Sub-Ocean Dynamics Experiment (S-MODE) mission will publish a series of water and air instruments to demonstrate what is happening just below sea level.
The S-MODE team hopes to learn more about small movements of seawater such as whirlpools. This vortex stretches for about 6.2 miles or 10 kilometers and slowly moves the ocean waters in a swirling pattern.
“The campaign in May aims to compare different methods of measuring sea level currents so we can be confident in those measurements when we reach the pilots in October,” said Tom Farrar, an associate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts. Principal Investigator at S-MODE.
The full field campaign will start in October 2021.
The team uses a self-propelled commercial Wave Glider aircraft equipped with scientific instruments that can study the ocean from its surface. The most important tool on an airplane is the Doppler acoustic current meter, which uses sonar to measure the speed of water and gather information about how fast currents and eddies are moving, and in which direction.
The glider also carries instruments for measuring wind speed, air temperature, humidity, water temperature, salinity, infrared and infrared radiation from the sun.
The new data will enable scientists to better predict the heat and gas exchange between Earth’s atmosphere and oceans, thereby better understanding global climate change.
As the Wave Glider continues its slow journey across the ocean surface, it will fly multiple planes overhead to collect data from different locations.
The October deployment will also use NASA’s Langley Gulfstream 3 Research Center aircraft with Portable Telescopic Imaging Spectrometer (PRISM) – a device for measuring phytoplankton and other biological material in the water – a large ship and several independent sailing vessels, called gliders, plus Airplanes. and gliders.
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