In order to predict the occurrence of El Nino, scientists need to have precise measurements of the conditions above and below the Pacific Ocean, but gathering that data is no easy task. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History. Right now we’re on board a research vessel in the Pacific with Bob Weller, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
“The key to obtaining better measurements of the exchange of heat and fresh water between the ocean and the atmosphere is to install surface buoys that have very accurate instrumentation. This is a bit of a challenge. If you go down to the equator near the Galapagos, you’re in about four thousand meters of water. So what we do on these cruises is we go out and we try to anchor to the ocean bottom, four thousand meters down, a surface buoy. It’s about ten feet in diameter, made of aluminum and on this surface buoy we place various meteorological sensors to measure wind speed and direction, the amount of rain, the sunlight coming in, air temperature and sea temperature.”
But gathering data in the ocean is fraught with difficulties. Steve Anderson is an assistant scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
“There are several challenges to maintaining these observational platforms in the open ocean. First of which is gooseneck barnacles that grow on the instruments. There’s also fish that may be attracted to these buoys. The fish sometimes like to bite our instruments which could cause them to fail. A third type of bio-fouling would be birds that come and sit on our solar radiation sensor and then we get an error in our estimate of the amount of radiation coming in under the ocean.”
Pulse of the Planet is presented by the American Museum of Natural History. I’m Jim Metzner.