Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Laboratory (614)
Aquarius
Aquarius is a focused satellite mission to measure global Sea Surface Salinity (SSS). Scientific progress is limited because conventional in situ SSS sampling is too sparse to give the global view of salinity variability that only a satellite can provide. Aquarius will resolve missing physical processes that link the water cycle, the climate, and the ocean.
Jason 1
Jason-1 is the first follow-on to the highly successful TOPEX/Poseidon mission that measured ocean surface topography to an accuracy of 4.2 cm, enabled scientists to forecast the 1997-1998 El Niño, and improved understanding of ocean circulation and its effect of global climate. The joint NASA-CNES program will launch a French spacecraft on an American Delta II from an American base. Like TOPEX/Poseidon, the payload will include both American and French instruments. Jason-1 altimeter data will be part of a suite of data provided by other JPL-managed ocean missions--the GRACE mission will use two satellites to accurately measure Earth's mass distribution, and the QuikSCAT scatterometer mission will measure ocean-surface winds.
SeaWiFS (Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor)
The purpose of the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) Project is to provide quantitative data on global ocean bio-optical properties to the Earth science community. Subtle changes in ocean color signify various types and quantities of marine phytoplankton (microscopic marine plants), the knowledge of which has both scientific and practical applications. The SeaWiFS Project will develop and operate a research data system that will process, calibrate, validate, archive and distribute data received from an Earth-orbiting ocean color sensor. A detailed description of the objectives, organization and operations as well as the current status of the SeaWiFS Project is available.
TOPEX/Poseidon (TOPography EXperiment for Ocean Circulation)
TOPEX/Poseidon data has revolutionized the way the global ocean is studied. For the first time, the seasonal cycle and other temporal variabilities of the ocean have been determined globally with high accuracy, yielding fundamentally important information for testing ocean circulation models. Major observations were made using TOPEX/Poseidon data on
- Oceanic circulation including details on the movement of Rossby and Kelvin waves
- Oceanic and coastal tides
- El Niño, La Niña, and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation
- El Niño-like circulation in the Atlantic Ocean
- Oceanic seasons in the Mediterranean
- Ocean floor topography from surface data used to - refine the geoid model
Winds: Remote Sensing of Ocean Surface Winds
One of the fundamental problems faced by oceanographers is the sheer size of the oceans. Oceans cover 70 per cent of the Earth's surface. Remote sensing allows measurements to be made of vast areas of ocean repeated at intervals in time.
As the largest source of momentum for the ocean surface, winds affect the full range of ocean movement - from individual surface waves to complete current systems. Winds over the ocean modulate air-sea exchanges of heat, moisture, gases, and particulates. This modulation regulates the interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean, which establishes and maintains both global and regional climates.
The tropical Pacific Ocean and overlying atmosphere react to, and influence each other. Easterly surface winds along the equator control the amount and temperature of the water that upwells (moves or flows upward) to the surface. This upwelling of cold water determines sea-surface temperature distribution, which affects rainfall distribution. This in turn determines the strength of the easterly winds - a continuous cycle.
In the United States alone, hurricanes have been responsible for at least 17,000 deaths since 1900 and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage annually. Worldwide, 1998 was the worst hurricane season in the last 200 years. There were ten hurricanes. One of them, Mitch, killed over 10,000 people in Central America.
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- Page Last Updated: November 19, 2009