NASA Voyage To Explore Link Between Sea Saltiness and Climate 44
DevotedSkeptic sends this excerpt from NASA:
"A NASA-sponsored expedition is set to sail to the North Atlantic's saltiest spot to get a detailed, 3-D picture of how salt content fluctuates in the ocean's upper layers and how these variations are related to shifts in rainfall patterns around the planet. The research voyage is part of a multi-year mission, dubbed the Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study (SPURS), which will deploy multiple instruments in different regions of the ocean. ... They will return with new data to aid in understanding one of the most worrisome effects of climate change — the acceleration of Earth's water cycle. As global temperatures go up, evaporation increases, altering the frequency, strength, and distribution of rainfall around the planet, with far-reaching implications for life on Earth."
Oh well (Score:1)
There goes my wonderful idea of collecting oceanic rainfall for our fresh water needs.
Isn't this more NOAA's job? (Score:3, Insightful)
With NASA crying that it doesn't have enough money, why is it trying to do something that is probably NOAA's job?
Typical bureaucrats- gotta do anything to build their empires.
Note: I'm not saying this isn't good science to do, just that it's someone else's job.
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That's crazy talk. Everyone knows that NASA is National Aeronautics and Space Agency, and NOAA is National Ocean--
Never mind. :-)
Re:Isn't this more NOAA's job? (Score:5, Informative)
NASA has an interesting historical discussion of that question [nasa.gov]. The division of labor used to be that NASA flew the observational satellites, while NOAA and NWS did the ground-based work and data analysis. That makes some sense to me, but NASA says that by the 1970s this wasn't working (partly due to budget cuts), so NASA was given authority to run entire programs focused on earth analysis in an in-house manner, including both satellite and ground-based elements. NASA's first major program under that new mission description was the ozone-hole monitoring program [nasa.gov], started in 1979.
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I had the same question... why NASA as opposed to NOAA?
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Good question. The short version is: This is basic science research, not a monitoring project.
NASA (although it was an international effort) put up a satellite, called Aquarius. It passively measures salinity all over the globe. Which is amazing and very complex and seems to be working quite well..
Thing is though, conventional science has been focused on salinity well below the surface; the satellite only sees the upper few centimeters. Conventional buoys, seagliders, and UUAV vehicles don't sample that clo
Re:Isn't this more NOAA's job? (Score:4, Informative)
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...it's someone else's job.
"It's not my job" is the last thing I want to hear from a bureaucrat... Blurring the lines between the various departments doesn't sound like a bad thing to me. We should encourage the sharing of resources.
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NASA has a physical oceanography program because of its special capabilities in remote sensing. But while you may build a research program around a highly specialized golden hammer, it doesn't mean the golden hammer can do *everything* the program needs.
So the why here is simple: NASA's research program needed some ocean-based fieldwork done. Rather than buy and staff it's own ship, it farmed out this project to a group of academics who already had a ship (the R/V Knorr), and who had complementary researc
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Thank you oh so much for informing me of my ignorance, AC. I guess the fact that I preside over an educational & support organization dedicated to sustainable agriculture was just a case of bad hiring?
Truly scary in light of your previous comments. Which organization do you preside over? The amplification of the hydrologic cycle is resulting in more intense precipitation events with longer periods of little precipitation in between, and dryer conditions in general for much of the USA. Preparing for
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The amplification of the hydrologic cycle is resulting in more intense precipitation events with longer periods of little precipitation in between, and dryer conditions in general for much of the USA.
And if we ever get evidence in support of your assertion (and which supports your tone of alarmism), you'll be right. In the meantime, dealing with agricultural problems that are much more serious than AGW (such as deforestation, desertification, soil fertility), is the better idea. Hell, it may still be better to deal with those problems instead, even if AGW is confirmed.
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The amplification of the hydrologic cycle is resulting in more intense precipitation events with longer periods of little precipitation in between, and dryer conditions in general for much of the USA.
And if we ever get evidence in support of your assertion (and which supports your tone of alarmism), you'll be right. In the meantime, dealing with agricultural problems that are much more serious than AGW (such as deforestation, desertification, soil fertility), is the better idea.
It may be alarming, I don't know. Those are your words, not mine. But this is exactly what is being observed. Dealing with deforestation and desertification are noble goals. Both of these problems are exacerbated by global warming. At some point we will need to turn some of our attention away from cleaning up the blood and actually address the wound.
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At some point we will need to turn some of our attention away from cleaning up the blood and actually address the wound.
It's not my fault you can't tell the difference between injuries and illusions. As I noted, there are more important problems than AGW. It is a mystery to me why you continue to insist on obsessing on AGW when these real problems are causing far greater harm now than AGW is ever projected to do.
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Hit the nail on the head. Topsoil loss is one of, if not the major source of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It's a far and away bigger source than automobiles. The soil itself is our most easily accessible and workable carbon sink.
You'd think, all these people running around screaming about CO2, would know this. Adding an inch of organic topsoil to an area the size of, say, Nebraska... would clean more CO2 out of the air than taking all the SUV's off the planet's roads.
The bonus -- better y
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The amplification of the hydrologic cycle is resulting in more intense precipitation events with longer periods of little precipitation in between, and dryer conditions in general for much of the USA. Preparing for every eventuallity seems rather costly when we know that some are not worth considering.
Working toward fixing desertification, deforestation, soil loss... is preparation for anything climate does. It's the same stuff regardless, and costs the same.
What's with the AGW-my-way-or-the-highway attitude around here? So much for /. being a haven for inquisitive scientific minds. I have actual solutions that are simple to implement, don't require carbon taxes, and result in a cleaner, saner environment for everyone whether the climate gets colder, hotter, wetter, or drier, but every time I suggest
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What's with the AGW-my-way-or-the-highway attitude around here? So much for /. being a haven for inquisitive scientific minds.
I'm merely suggesting that considering the science will put you in a better position to determine what mix of mitigation and adaptation should be considered. That your ignorance of the science appears willful (crystal balls?) is disconcerting given your position.
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For most of the USA the likely outcome appears to be less rainfall; basically, the southwestern deserts will move northwards, so current farming regions will look more like Arizona. But Canada may do quite well out of the change.
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"For most of the USA the likely outcome appears to be less rainfall..."
Do you have a source for this? It certainly contradicts what I read about it. I am not far from Canada, and while it has been unusually warm this year, it has also been very abnormally humid.
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If you're close to Canada (e.g. North Dakota) things may be different; I was thinking of the more southern parts of the current American farm belt, like Kansas. I can't seem to find the map I had in mind, though; I've seen a map projecting how the wheat belt would shift with global warming, and it basically moves northwards, so more parts of Saskatchewan and Alberta become farming regions, but some of the southern part of the current wheat region becomes too hot/dry.
Re:Farmers (Score:4, Informative)
"For most of the USA the likely outcome appears to be less rainfall..."
Do you have a source for this? It certainly contradicts what I read about it. I am not far from Canada, and while it has been unusually warm this year, it has also been very abnormally humid.
The IPCC is a good resource for this: "General circulation models (GCMs) project an increase in precipitation at high latitudes, although the amount of that increase varies between models, and decreases in precipitation over many sub-tropical and mid-latitude areas in both hemispheres. Precipitation during the coming decades is projected to be more concentrated into more intense events, with longer periods of little precipitation in between. The increase in the number of consecutive dry days is projected to be most significant in North and Central America, the Caribbean, north-eastern and south-western South America, southern Europe and the Mediterranean, southern Africa and western Australia." - http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/technical-papers/ccw/chapter4.pdf [www.ipcc.ch]
Interestingly this is exactly what is being observed.
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"Interestingly this is exactly what is being observed."
Well, I will play Devil's Advocate and make the argument that others have made to me about the same kinds of observations: weather is not climate, and we cannot judge by one year alone.
I did think the situation in my area was worthy of mention, as an anecdote, but I don't expect anyone to try to draw real conclusions from it.
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"Interestingly this is exactly what is being observed."
Well, I will play Devil's Advocate and make the argument that others have made to me about the same kinds of observations: weather is not climate, and we cannot judge by one year alone.
You are right of course, but I meant this in general, not in reference to your specific case.
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This video by NOAA fluid dynamics laboratory is also very instructive: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/09/05/799721/climate-change-how-the-wet-will-get-wetter-and-the-dry-will-get-drier/ [thinkprogress.org]
As the planet warms, the atmosphere pulls more water out of the sub-tropics as evaporation. Much of that water condenses into clouds and is transported poleward by the winds where it is eventually deposited as precipitation at the sub-polar latitudes. So, as temperatures rise, there is an increase in the total amou
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I am aware that these are only approximations based on models. But in my experience, my particular region has so far not done anything even close to what was predicted for the last 10 years or so.
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Increased rainfall isn't helpful if it come at you as 2 months of drought then 5 inches of rain in one day.
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This is why water storage, in the form mainly of swales and ponds, for agriculture, is so critical. I live in a high desert region where this pretty much already happens, and instead of collecting the rain, we foolishly let it run downstream to flood places like Ohio.
So, I'm thinking, the flood/drought cycle is easier fixed with a bit of geo-engineering than trying to predict the future with AGW theories and otherwise sitting on our hands. Is it easier to deal with what climate hands us, or to change t
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[How scientific, present conclusion, then gather data which can't rebutt conclusion,
but can only show the manifestation of said conclusion.
what happened to theories?
Actually, the salinity data is already in, from NASA's Aquarius instrument [wikipedia.org] on the SAC-D satellite. What they're doing is paying for part of a surface expedition that will among other things check their Aquarius results.
As for "theories", I think you mean "hypotheses". I think they're interested in how the surface data from the satellite does or does not correlate with the water underneath the surface.
Press releases like these... (Score:1)
Make me wonder if its possible to get a degree in Backronyms.
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From the article summary it sounds as if they have already decided on the "facts" and are simply launching an expedition to search for supporting/confirming evidence.
Oddly enough, you've got that almost right. The Aquarius instrument [wikipedia.org] has been orbiting since June 2011 sending back surface salinity data -- "facts" if you prefer that term. The principal investigators on the SPURS cruise seem to be in it for the modeling data, but NASA's interest no doubt includes checking the reliability and usability of the Aquarius data.
I understand that reading the linked article is bad form, but before jumping to conclusions then working yourself up into a dudgeon, you might spend two
Go "worrisome" yourself to death please (Score:2)
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The problem is very rapid change. If the climate changes very quickly even humans will find it hard to adapt fast enough, never mind the various other species we depend upon directly and indirectly.
If we can see rapid change coming (and it now seems likely that we can) and we can do something to slow or even limit that change, shouldn't we do it? Or at least have a debate about whether we should act or not.
Attacking scientists seems to be shooting the messenger.