{"id":30646,"date":"2018-11-07T10:07:04","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T14:07:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fondriest.com\/news\/?p=30646"},"modified":"2025-01-13T13:18:25","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T17:18:25","slug":"floating-diving-robots-in-the-southern-ocean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fondriest.com\/news\/floating-diving-robots-in-the-southern-ocean.htm","title":{"rendered":"Floating, Diving Robots in the Southern Ocean"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The polar regions of the world have always a challenge for scientists to explore and study. Even logistics that are typically no more than passing concerns under other circumstances such as transportation become major problems during polar wintertime. Now, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1029\/2018GL078013\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">researchers are reporting<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> on their use of hundreds of oceanic floats that are drifting and diving their way through the Southern Ocean, including under its ice, with surprising results.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #808080;\">Happy robotic wanderers<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">EM spoke with<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ocean.washington.edu\/home\/Alison%20Gray\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dr. Alison Gray<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, assistant professor of physical oceanography at the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washington.edu\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">University of Washington<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, to find out more about the work, the robots, and the significance of the findings in improving our understanding of the global climate and this poorly studied region.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cMy background is in using data from these types of instruments,\u201d explains Dr. Gray. \u201cThere&#8217;s a larger global array, <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.argo.net\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the Argo array<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, composed of the same type of instruments that measure temperature and salinity. There are about four-thousand of them in the global ocean, and this has revolutionized our understanding of ocean circulation, temperature, salinity and the physics of the ocean.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">During Dr. Gray&#8217;s post-doctoral work, they began to study these Argo instruments and install additional sensors on them in the Southern Ocean. These new sensors monitor dissolved oxygen, nitrogen, and pH in addition to the standard Argo parameters of salinity and temperature, and they adorn the floats the team is now using on the current project.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe floats are measuring temperature and salinity, and they also kind of give us an estimate, just based on their location, as to how they are moved about by currents in the ocean,\u201d details Dr. Gray. \u201cThat also gives us an estimate of the velocity of the ocean, of the currents. So those measurements happen concurrently with all of the other measurements, that data gets sent to the regular Argo system, and then we get five other variables that are being measured.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The robots each take their own unique, random path in the water, drifting with currents and adjusting their buoyancy to make observations at varying depths. The floats eventually surface, and transmit their observations via satellite to the team on the shore.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThey just wander,\u201d remarks Dr. Gray. \u201cThey spend about 95 percent of the time at 1,000 meters beneath the surface, so whatever the ocean is doing controls. Some of the floats don&#8217;t go far at all; you deploy them and they hang out in one location. Some of them really move a large distance over the course of their lifetimes. So each one really has its own trajectory, its own lifetime, and its own story to tell.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #808080;\">Controversial results<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The study itself is a collaboration between Dr. Gray at the University of Washington and teammates through Princeton University&#8217;s <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/soccom.princeton.edu\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM) project<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mbari.org\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and other oceanographic research organizations.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI was lucky enough to be involved with the project from the beginning,\u201d comments Dr. Gray. \u201cThe first float that we deployed went out in the spring of 2014, and then every year we&#8217;ve added more floats. After we got about a year&#8217;s worth of data from the initial set of floats that went out, I started looking at the carbon flux, and we realized what we were seeing was very different from the previous estimates of carbon uptake in the Southern Ocean. That was obviously very intriguing, and we really worked hard the next few years to really ensure we were confident in our results, and analyze multiple years of data. Eventually, we found a striking difference with the previous estimates of the carbon flux in that region.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Conventional wisdom concerning the Southern Ocean, which is south of the 35th parallel, at about the tip of South Africa, indicates that it takes up a significant amount of carbon, and plays an important role in the carbon cycle of the planet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIf you think of all the carbon that&#8217;s been emitted by human activity since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, about a quarter of that has gone into the global ocean, and about half of that quarter has been taken up in the Southern Ocean,\u201d Dr. Gray states. \u201cThat&#8217;s sort of what our best estimates are, so even though it&#8217;s remote and most people never think about the region, it is actually having a big impact on the global climate.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_30650\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-30650\" class=\"size-large wp-image-30650\" src=\"https:\/\/www.fondriest.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Southern_ocean_deploying_steven-600x400.jpg\" alt=\"Southern Ocean\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/news.fondriest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Southern_ocean_deploying_steven-600x400.jpg 600w, https:\/\/news.fondriest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Southern_ocean_deploying_steven-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/news.fondriest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Southern_ocean_deploying_steven-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/news.fondriest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Southern_ocean_deploying_steven-940x627.jpg 940w, https:\/\/news.fondriest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Southern_ocean_deploying_steven.jpg 1440w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-30650\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stephen Riser (left) drops a float into the Southern Ocean during a 2016\/17 cruise. (Credit: Greta Shum\/ClimateCentral, https:\/\/www.eurekalert.org\/multimedia\/pub\/178051.php?from=402838)<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, the results the team produced were significantly different than what researchers have estimated in the past.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe only saw a very significant difference with the previous estimate in one fraction of the Southern Ocean: that area that is typically covered by sea ice during the winter, radiating outward from Antarctica,\u201d explains Dr. Gray. \u201cPreviously we thought this region had a net zero carbon uptake. But with our float-based estimates, we were able to see that in winter there&#8217;s a whole lot of outgassing. The ocean is emitting carbon into the atmosphere in this region, and that led to an annual net difference that is significant. By our estimates, the whole Southern Ocean goes from being a large uptake for carbon of about 0.9 or 0.8 petagrams of carbon per year to something like 0.1.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This surprising result has triggered a skeptical reaction in some, \u201cBecause it&#8217;s a big change in our understanding,\u201d adds Dr. Gray. \u201cThere are multiple explanations for the change, and probably some of each are in play here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, the team is certain that annual variability in previous estimates is not enough to explain the difference in the results.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThere is significant variability in the carbon uptake in the Southern Ocean; we do see that even from ship data going back decades, we see these big swings,\u201d remarks Dr. Gray. \u201cBut the difference that we&#8217;re seeing is still outside of the range of that variability, so we think that year to year changes can&#8217;t explain it. We think what was probably happening was that our previous estimates that were based on shipboard data were missing this wintertime outgassing that&#8217;s really significant, and because of that they were biased.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The team used new technology to get the results, but they also monitored a different parameter. Instead of directly measuring dissolved CO2 in the water as they would from a ship, the floats monitor pH levels, allowing the team to estimate the carbon levels based on the pH.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThat said, it certainly is based on fundamental carbonate chemistry,\u201d clarifies Dr. Gray. \u201cBut there are some uncertainties that go along with that, in contrast to if we were to directly measure it, and we do definitely take that into account. Even taking into account those uncertainties, the difference we find is significant.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #808080;\">Understanding Earth&#8217;s most hostile areas<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The floats deployed in this project are enabling a much more robust understanding of the Southern Ocean, something that has repeatedly proven difficult or impossible for researchers to do without technological assistance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe Southern Ocean is one of the least well-sampled areas in the whole world, because it is so far away and so unpleasant, basically, to be there in the wintertime,\u201d comments Dr. Gray. The team continues to process the data\u2014and form a stronger, clearer picture of outgassing in the area.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_30648\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-30648\" class=\"size-large wp-image-30648\" src=\"https:\/\/www.fondriest.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Southern_ocean_robots_path-600x685.jpg\" alt=\"Southern Ocean\" width=\"600\" height=\"685\" srcset=\"https:\/\/news.fondriest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Southern_ocean_robots_path-600x685.jpg 600w, https:\/\/news.fondriest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Southern_ocean_robots_path-263x300.jpg 263w, https:\/\/news.fondriest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Southern_ocean_robots_path.jpg 716w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-30648\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This shows the robots&#8217; paths around Antarctica. Dark gray is land, and light gray is sea ice. Instruments colored dark orange in the &#8216;Antarctic Southern Zone&#8217; found higher-than-expected outgassing of carbon dioxide. (Credit: Alison Gray\/University of Washington, https:\/\/www.eurekalert.org\/multimedia\/pub\/178052.php?from=402838)<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe data are still coming in, but we expect to get about four years of data from each float, and we&#8217;re continuing to do put out more with the goal of getting about 200 of them deployed over the course of the lifetime of the project,\u201d states Dr. Gray. \u201cSo it&#8217;s still ongoing research, and we&#8217;re still teasing apart the data, but I think people are becoming more and more convinced.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In some ways, Dr. Gray says the results shouldn&#8217;t seem all that shocking.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe do already know that in this region the deep water that was isolated from the atmosphere for a long time is reaching the surface water again,\u201d explains Dr. Gray. \u201cSo we expect there to be a lot of carbon in this water, we just underestimated the magnitude of the outgassing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With this difference established, the team will work to answer other questions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIf this particular region is emitting all this carbon that we were previously not accounting for, where is that missing carbon going? asks Dr. Gray. \u201cOur estimates of atmospheric carbon concentrations are very robust, so we&#8217;re not hiding any carbon in the atmosphere.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The likely explanation, according to Dr. Gray, is that it&#8217;s going into the ocean in a different place than previously thought. Another possibility is that our understanding of what&#8217;s happening with terrestrial ecosystems is off.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIf it&#8217;s happening somewhere in the ocean, it&#8217;s still likely that those things would be happening in the southern hemisphere somewhere, just further to the north,\u201d Dr. Gray describes. \u201cBut we also have very few observations from the southern hemisphere subtropical oceans. So certainly using this kind of technology and expanding to global coverage makes us more likely to capture what&#8217;s happening on a global scale.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Next for the team and others using the data, may simply be expanding our understanding of what&#8217;s happening under the wintertime ice\u2014now that we finally have the opportunity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe&#8217;re getting very new and exciting data because a lot of the floats are basically taking data under the ice during the winter and that, in particular, is something that we&#8217;ve never been able to see before,\u201d details Dr. Gray. \u201cSo we&#8217;ll be continuing to understand the data and analyze the role of the Southern Ocean and how it impacts the global scale carbon cycle.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThere are many different uses for this kind of data, and having it all out there, people discover new applications for it that you don&#8217;t even think of yourself; that&#8217;s really the great value of the data set and a strong argument for collecting it,\u201d adds Dr. Gray.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"color: #808080;\">Top image: Data captured by the floats show outgassing near the edge of the Antarctic sea ice. This photo was taken in January, during the Southern Ocean summer, when the floats were deployed. The higher-than-expected outgassing was seen in the stormier winter months. (Credit: Hannah Zanowski\/University of Washington\/Flickr, https:\/\/www.eurekalert.org\/multimedia\/pub\/178050.php?from=402838.)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers have deployed floating, diving robots to monitor water parameters in the Southern Ocean under the wintertime ice, with surprising results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":30649,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,5,79,6,8,44],"tags":[1218,1219,1220,1223,60,1222,109,1221,1217,206],"class_list":["post-30646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-earth-atmosphere","category-featured-articles","category-monitoring-gear-2","category-monitoring_tech-htm","category-newsfeed","category-oceans-coasts","tag-alison-gray","tag-argo-array","tag-carbon","tag-circulation","tag-featured","tag-monterey-bay-aquarium-research-institute","tag-news-ticker","tag-soccom","tag-southern-ocean","tag-university-of-washington"],"remote_post_permalink":false,"remote_post_featured_image":false,"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Floating, Diving Robots in the Southern Ocean<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Researchers have deployed floating, diving robots to monitor water parameters in the Southern Ocean under the wintertime ice, with surprising results.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fondriest.com\/news\/floating-diving-robots-in-the-southern-ocean.htm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Floating, Diving Robots in the Southern Ocean\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Researchers have deployed floating, diving robots to monitor water parameters in the Southern Ocean under the wintertime ice, with surprising results.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.fondriest.com\/news\/floating-diving-robots-in-the-southern-ocean.htm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Environmental Monitor\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-11-07T14:07:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-01-13T17:18:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.fondriest.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Southern_ocean_sea_ice.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1440\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1080\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Karla Lant\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Karla Lant\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.fondriest.com\\\/news\\\/floating-diving-robots-in-the-southern-ocean.htm#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.fondriest.com\\\/news\\\/floating-diving-robots-in-the-southern-ocean.htm\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Karla Lant\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.fondriest.com\\\/news\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/51170f7bfa3a05b94cea6f517ce4e79b\"},\"headline\":\"Floating, Diving Robots in the Southern Ocean\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-11-07T14:07:04+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-01-13T17:18:25+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.fondriest.com\\\/news\\\/floating-diving-robots-in-the-southern-ocean.htm\"},\"wordCount\":1803,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.fondriest.com\\\/news\\\/floating-diving-robots-in-the-southern-ocean.htm#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/news.fondriest.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2018\\\/11\\\/Southern_ocean_sea_ice.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Alison Gray\",\"Argo array\",\"carbon\",\"circulation\",\"featured\",\"Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute\",\"news ticker\",\"SOCCOM\",\"Southern Ocean\",\"University of Washington\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Earth &amp; 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This photo was taken in January, during the Southern Ocean summer, when the floats were deployed. The higher-than-expected outgassing was seen in the stormier winter months. 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