Perpetual ocean

Tonight's ocean currents video, courtesy NASA (try watching full screen):

From the video's description:

This visualization shows ocean surface currents around the world during the period from June 2005 through [December] 2007. The visualization does not include a narration or annotations; the goal was to use ocean flow data to create a simple, visceral experience.

This visualization was produced using NASA/JPL's computational model called Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, Phase II or ECCO2.. ECCO2 is high resolution model of the global ocean and sea-ice. ECCO2 attempts to model the oceans and sea ice to increasingly accurate resolutions that begin to resolve ocean eddies and other narrow-current systems which transport heat and carbon in the oceans.The ECCO2 model simulates ocean flows at all depths, but only surface flows are used in this visualization. The dark patterns under the ocean represent the undersea bathymetry. Topographic land exaggeration is 20x and bathymetric exaggeration is 40x.

credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

source: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?3827

The Tides of March

Tonight's high tide video, from the Bay of Fundy:

Science sub "flying" across the Atlantic

The folks at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University have build an unmanned sub designed to "glide" on ocean currents between 15 and 300 feet deep. The goal of the project is to gather data on ocean currents and temperatures, about which we know relatively little.

(Slocum Autonomous Underwater Glider, RU17, Photo: Rutgers)

The battery-powered sub, which measures about eight feet long and weighs about 130 pounds, "glides" forward by changing back and forth between positive and negative buoyancy, allowing a forward motion in still water of about 0.5 knots (approximately 0.6 miles per hour). Not terribly fast, but by catching ocean currents, the craft can cover ground much more quickly. The craft operates autonomously for the most part, but can receive steering inputs and exchange data via satellite connection.

Here's a video report on the group's earlier successful 1,600 mile mission to Halifax, Nova Scotia:



On May 21, 2008, the Rutgers crew launched their latest mission -- to travel from the waters off New Jersey across the Atlantic to the Western tip of Spain, a straight-line distance of about 3,300 miles. The expected as-traveled path is reported to be about 3,800 miles. Ocean data collected is shared with the U.S. Navy, which is also sharing forecast models to aid in path planning.

(Slocum Glider RU17 mission map, Photo: Rutgers)

The sub is currently about half-way across the Atlantic, and have been at sea for over 50 days. Here's map of its current progress:

(Slocum Glider RU17 progress map, Photo: Rutgers)

And here's a progress map showing ocean temperatures:

(Slocum Glider RU17 progress map, showing ocean temps, Photo: Rutgers)

To read more about the project and track progress of the current mission, go here.

The Oceans are Really Just Big Bathtubs, Anyway

"It was a dark and stormy night ..."

No, I'm not entering the Bulwer-Lytton worst opening lines contest. It really was dark and stormy one January night in 1992, when 29,000 bathtub toys -- duckies, turtles, and frogs -- were washed overboard from a cargo ship in the middle of the Pacific. The toys were in one of the large shipping containers that washed overboard during the storm and which evidently opened before it sank, releasing the (buoyant) toys, albeit in their cardboard packaging. The cardboard packaging disintegrated in the water, and the plastic menagerie gained their freedom. In the years since, this flotilla of hardy little toys has ridden ocean currents and been washing up on shores around the globe -- in Australia, Alaska, and the western coasts of both North and South America. Incredibly, some have apparently even made it through the Arctic icepack to make landfall in New England, and even Old England. Their progress has been used to help chart the ocean currents.

George Bush Snr was still US President when the toys from The First Years Inc. were made in China, packed into a container and put on a ship for the US.

But after falling overboard, the sea water corroded the card-packaging and the toys floated free. They circled the northern Pacific once before being washed up on the Alaskan shore, then all down the West coast of Canada and the US.

Mr Ebbesmeyer saw immediately how valuable the little toys would be to scientific research of the great ocean currents, the engine of the planet's entire climate.

He correctly predicted what many thought was impossible - that thousands of them would end up washed into the Arctic ice near Alaska, and then move at a mile a day, frozen in the pack ice, around their very own North-West Passage to the Atlantic.

It proved true years later and in 2003, the first "Friendly Floatees" were found, frozen and then thawed out, on the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and Canada.

Here's a map of their remarkable journey:

(click to enlarge)

Quite the hardy little world travelers. Fascinating, no?