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Hey, everyone. Welcome to Earth Expeditions. Today, we're taking you to the North Atlantic.
We've got a team in the field right now. Actually, we've got a team on the ocean and
in the sky right now. Let's check in on the researchers.
Chemistry, biology, physics, the NASA mission has gathered experts in all three disciplines
and more for an ambitious project to study Earth's climate. It's called the North Atlantic
Aerosols and Marine Ecosystems Study. NASA called it NAAMES. It's a complex mission with
a million moving parts, but there are three big ones to note. First, there's the research
vessel Atlantis, a laboratory at sea. Then, there's NASA's own C-130 Hercules, a
laboratory in the sky. And one more, but we'll get to that. It's big hardware for sure, but
the stars of the show, besides a crackerjack team of scientists, are these guys, phytoplankton.
In the North Atlantic, there are trillions, and springtime is when they bloom.
Phytoplankton produce a gas called dimethyl sulfide, or DMS, and as that gas passes into
the atmosphere, it rapidly breaks down. The resulting sulfur compounds become aerosols,
microscopic particles, in essence, and water condenses around them. And you know what you
get when countless water droplets condense in the atmosphere? Clouds. There's a startling
connection. Phytoplankton affect cloud formation. But phytoplankton growth depends on available
carbon, and the warmer the temperatures of the ocean, the less carbon that water can
hold. Less carbon could restrict phytoplankton growth, which in turn could affect global
cloud cover, among other things. When one part of the system changes, everything shifts,
and that's why NASA has teams out in the field studying how the system works from all sorts
of angles. So, what's the mission's third big moving
part? That would be the agency's fleet of spacecraft currently in orbit gathering global
information 24/7/365. Lessons learned from NAAMES and related research will help experts
develop the next generation of spacecraft, some of which are already on the drawing board.
Let's talk with NAAMES' principle investigator Mike Behrenfeld from Oregon State University.
Mike, why do you go out in the field? Sometimes you can't simulate natural conditions
in a lab. And so, what you do is you take your lab to sea so that you can actually measure
natural communities, natural conditions that you can't get in the lab.
So, is just a shift in aircraft working on this project?
This project that we're doing on the Atlantis is not an isolated event, right? It's part
of a much bigger picture. So, we have satellites. We have the work that's done on the ship.
We have modelers, and it's all these different components that bring the whole story together.
So, you can't necessarily do a global science project from a single standpoint. But, every
element is critical to coming up with the answers that you're looking for.
How many field campaigns are involved in NAAMES? It involves four field campaigns, not just
this one. And each one is targeting a specific time of the year, specific set of events,
in the ocean as well as in the atmosphere. We're leading a little bit of us behind in
each one of these cruises. So, we have what are called drifters, and we deploy those at
different locations in the North Atlantic here. And those drifters will follow a piece
of water for up to years. And we're also deploying what are called floats,
which ironically sink, and they go up and down through the water column. And they can
often stay in a single spot for a couple of years. And they take measurements continuously,
up and down through the water column, looking at the biology, looking at the chemistry and
the optics. And that continues to give us data of what's happening with those ecosystems
that we studied on the ship and then left behind.
How did this project start? You know, the NAAMES project started from
space and worked its way down to the ocean, which is not often the case. One of the reasons,
as I mentioned, that the field research is really important is because it provides a
level of detail that we can't get from robots and satellites, right? There's a lot of detail
in there. And so, the satellite data would kind of kick this off. It's looking at the
full annual cycle of the plankton and bringing up some ideas that were kind of contrary to
what we had thought was driving blooms. This is really big science and helps us answer
so many questions about climate change. Exclamation point.
Yeah, I know. One of the things I love about the NAAMES expedition is that it's going after
one of the biggest unknowns in the Earth's system. Like, literally how do the different
components link up? Right, right. And it's really cool because
this is all related to climate change. And I think a lot of times when we read about
climate change, when we hear about climate change, it's a lot of really depressing topics.
And it just seems like we're doomed and things like that.
But, what I really like being here at NASA and having all this great NASA research and
instruments and team is this kind of the hope for the future. I mean we're looking at all
these mysteries, and we're going to learn so much that it's really inspiring to see
all these people come together and try and learn more about our Earth and our lives here
on Earth. Yeah, and hopefully, we can take the information
and better predict and better forecast where we're headed.
Right. Anyhow, next up, we are going to take you
to the tropical Pacific to see coral reefs and how they're responding to changing ocean
conditions with NASA's coral expedition. Right. So, tune in next time, and until then,
log onto www.NASA.gov/EarthExpeditions.
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