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Grade level: 9-12
Theme: 21st century technology
Video: aquarius_passive_satellilte.flv

One thing to note about the Aquarius satellite is that it's what we call a "passive" satellite. Even though it takes a lot of work to get up there and a lot of people are working to put it up there, what it's doing is actually recording the wavelengths that the earth is radiating. So some satellites are "active": so they are sending a signal down through the atmosphere to earth's surface and then they are recording that signal that comes back. But when we're trying to measure the sea surface salinity, the Aquarius satellite will be recording the microwaves that the earth is sending back out to the atmosphere and space.

Grade level: 9-12
Theme: 21st century technology
Video: argo07_640x480.flv

ARGO is a global array of 3,000 free-drifting profiling floats that measures the temperature and salinity of the upper 2,000 meters (6,562 feet) of the ocean. This allows continuous monitoring of the temperature, salinity, and velocity of the upper ocean, with all data being relayed and made publicly available within hours after collection. ARGO measurements will be a key component calibrating - or "sea truthing" - the surface salinity measurements of Aquarius. An overview article from Oceanography magazine, "Salinity in ARGO", by Stephen Riser, Li Ren, and Annie Wong is available as a PDF.

This visualization shows the locations of the ARGO buoy array over time. When the buoys are above water, the lines are brighter; when the buoys are under water, the lines are fainter. The ARGO buoys measure ocean salinity, column temperature, and current velocities. (source)

Grade level: 9-12
Theme: 21st century technology
Video: global_ocean_04.flv

Soon a new satellite will even help us see tiny particles on the ocean's surface - like salt, which drives huge conveyor belts of water through the world's oceans, connecting currents and moving heat from pole to pole. Climate change could mean big changes for oceans. And that in turn would make life very different for those of us on dry land.

Paula Bontempi: "If the climate actually changes, and the oceans change or respond to that change, it most definitely will impact life as we know it, and especially humans."

David Adamec: "To understand exactly how we stay here and how we're going to survive both within the climate, and even our life cycle, it requires understanding what the water is doing."

Our climate is changing... in some places, faster than predicted. By using science to understand those changes, we can find ways of protecting our oceans - and ourselves - that make a world of difference.

Grade level: 9-12
Theme: 21st century technology
Video: global_ocean_03.flv

Other kinds of satellite sensors look at the Earth in a far different light. Heat sensing satellite instruments take the Earth's temperature by measuring infrared energy. Infrared wavelengths are invisible to our eyes, but some satellites can see them. And, as our climate changes, we can see ocean temperatures on the rise.

Other satellites show us peaks and valleys, not just on land - but, believe it or not - on the surface of the ocean. And as ice on land melts, there are increasingly more highs than lows. Sea level is rising.

Grade level: 9-12
Theme: 21st century technology
Video: global_ocean_01.flv

The Earth's climate is changing... in some places, faster than predicted. Something - or someone - is cranking up the heat. And many scientists say the main culprit is us. Climate change affects almost everything on our planet - including people. But could climate change affect something as huge, as deep, as mysterious as our oceans? Earth scientists are determined to find out.

Paula Bontempi: "You can see the atmosphere, you can see the land, but you can't really see beneath the ocean's surface. So you start wondering, you know, what's going on beneath the part we can see."

David Adamec: "We walk in a very small part of the atmosphere, and we walk on the land. And it's how that interaction takes place with the ocean, the atmosphere, and the land that determines our quality of life. Our goal is to understand the interconnectedness of it all."

For years, people have worked to unravel the mysteries of the oceans. Scientists gather data from ships and buoys on the surface, take the plunge to explore ocean depths, and fly overhead to get a bigger picture. But one of the best views of oceans might be from way, way overhead. It's the view from space.

Paula Bontempi: "The one thing that NASA satellites do that nothing else does, ships or buoys or anything else, is actually give you a picture of the globe within a few days. You get a much broader view of what's going on in some part of the Earth's system, and you can link that together to understand the Earth as a whole."

Grade level: 9-12
Theme: 21st century technology
Video: global_ocean_02.flv

Thousands of satellites orbit our planet. Some look out into space. Others look back at us... at Earth. Some of the sensors on these satellites act like giant digital cameras, taking pictures in visible light - the kind our eyes see. On land, these images show us when plants turn green, with the changing seasons. They help us see where dirt and pollution drain into the sea, and where microscopic plankton thrive. These tiny organisms are not only the base of the marine food web... they give us the air we breathe.

David Adamec: "We are dependent on life in the water. Especially in the ocean. There are small plants called phytoplankton that are responsible for 50 percent of the oxygen that you're breathing right now."

Grade level: 9-12
Theme: 21st century technology
Video: aquarius_launch.flv

Aquarius is going to be launched later this year. And one of the great things about it is that it has been in planning for a number of years and the launch is very exciting to all of those of us who have been working on it and looking forward to the launch. The main thing about it is that it is going to be giving us more data. So anybody who works in studying the oceans, the atmosphere, or the land on large scales is always interested in getting back more data. Because that just tells us a lot more about how the earth is working.

Grade level: 9-12
Theme: 21st century technology
Video: how_aquarius_works.flv

Most of us understand that the sun emits energy. We are very aware of that and we recognize the differences between day and night. But the earth also emits energy. In fact, everything that has a temperature emits energy. But the earth emits energy at different frequencies and different wavelengths than the sun. And when the earth emits that energy back, it emits most of that energy in what's called the infrared spectrum.

But some of that energy comes back at wavelengths that are micro-wavelengths. And the microwave lengths - the amount of energy that's emitted by the ocean - depends on the salinity. It is related to something we call the "brightness temperature". It all has to do with how much energy is emitted from the ocean back to the atmosphere, back out to space. And so if a satellite is sitting there, it's actually recording how much energy in that microwave segment is being emitted. And by the signal that it receives, it's able to "back out" (i.e., calculate) what the ocean salinity is.

Grade level: 9-12
Theme: 21st century technology
Article: documents/21.1_lagerloef.pdf

In an Oceanography article published 13 years ago, three of us identified salinity measurement from satellites as the next ocean remote-sensing challenge. We argued that this represented the next "zeroth order" contribution to oceanography because salinity variations form part of the interaction between ocean circulation and the global water cycle, which in turn affects the ocean's capacity to store and transport heat and regulate Earth's climate.

Now, we are pleased to report that a new satellite program scheduled for launch in the near future will provide data to reveal how the ocean responds to the combined effects of evaporation, precipitation, ice melt, and river runoff on seasonal and interannual time scales. These measurements can be used, for example, to close the marine hydrologic budget, constrain coupled climate models, monitor mode water formation, investigate the upper-ocean response to precipitation variability in the tropical convergence zones, and provide early detection of low-salinity intrusions in the subpolar Atlantic and Southern oceans.

Read and discuss the text on the Aquarius/SAC-D mission design (p. 73-74).