In January, we (Gualtiero and Amala) participated in a meeting to discuss air-sea interactions and intra-seasonal monsoonal variability in the Bay of Bengal.
A workshop was hosted at IIT-Madras along with students and scientists in India.
In January, we (Gualtiero and Amala) participated in a meeting to discuss air-sea interactions and intra-seasonal monsoonal variability in the Bay of Bengal.
A workshop was hosted at IIT-Madras along with students and scientists in India.
In the summer of 2016, Sebastian Essink participated in the Helmholtz Institute’s observational campaign to study submesoscale eddies in the Baltic Sea that evolve on time scales of less than a day. An airship and airplanes were used to obtain thermal imagery and track chlorophyll at meter-scale resolution. Coastal research vessels operated from the island of Bornholm and used towed instruments to measure the physical and biological structure in situ.
Pictures show the coast viewed from the Zeppelin, Sebastian on the deck and in the lab of the R/V Prandtl, and the speedboat R/V Eddy, which also towed instruments.
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As part of ASIRI, the Air-Sea Interaction Regional Initiative funded by ONR, we are exploring the role of freshwater on air-sea fluxes in order to improve understanding of the South Asian Monsoons.
We are on a research cruise on board the R/V Roger Revelle from August 23 to September 21, 2015. Scientists from several institutions including University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Oregon State University, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, National Institue of Ocean Technology Chennai and National Institute of Oceanography Vishakapatnam are participating in this cruise. The Mahadevan Lab of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are reporting on this blog.
“Much of this particulate organic carbon, especially the larger, heavier particles, sink. But we wanted to find out what is happening to the smaller, non-sinking phytoplankton cells from the bloom. Understanding the dynamics of the bloom and what happens to the carbon produced by it is important, especially for being able to predict how the oceans will affect atmospheric CO2 and climate,” says Melissa Omand, who did this study as a postdoctoral investigator in Amala Mahadevan’s lab at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).
Amala Mahadevan was amongst 50 fellows selected for a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. As a result, she is spending a sabbatical year (2014-15) at Harvard University. During her fellowship year, Mahadevan is devoting time to understanding how the physical complexity of upper ocean dynamics at scales of 0.1–10 kilometers affects oceanic ecosystems. Life in the ocean relies on the photosynthetic production of phytoplankton in the sunlit surface layer, and the complex dynamics of this layer, coupled with the availability of light and nutrients, leads to highly heterogeneous growth and distribution of phytoplankton. Organisms rely on the aggregation of food for survival, with a large fraction of the biological activity concentrated in hot spots. Mahadevan would like examine how the variability and episodic nature of physical processes affects the heterogeneity productivity and resilience of oceanic ecosystems. For more information, see http://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/people/amala-mahadevan
How Plankton Blooms Absorb CO2
From WGBH: Microscopic plankton play a vital role in the ocean’s absorption of atmospheric CO2. And since that absorption represents about one third of the planet’s CO2, scientists are keen to understand this very complex cycle. Dr. Amala Mahadevan explains how ocean eddies shift layers of warm and cold water, so that the phytoplankton are exposed to sunlight, and then begin to photosynthesize much like plants on land. The process leads to enormous “blooms” that can be seen from space.
Ocean eddies help jump-start plankton blooms that spread across hundreds of square milesIn what’s known as the North Atlantic Bloom, an immense number of phytoplankton burst into existence, first “greening,” then “whitening” the sea as one or more species take the place of others.
What turns on this huge bloom, what starts these ocean fireworks? Is it the Sun’s warmth? Read the news release »
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