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

Up until now when we've been trying to understand how density changes impact ocean circulation, we've really just had half the picture. Because we've just be able to look at our global coverage of temperature.

But with the Aquarius mission, we'll be able to complete that other half. We'll be able to look at the salinity information; and the salinity combined with temperature will give us the information about the density field.

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

A lot of what the Aquarius mission will help us oceanographers do is "catch up" with the atmospheric scientists. One of the big differences between oceanography and atmospheric sciences is that the atmosphere has been so much more sampled than the ocean. So, we know that we've had weather balloons for decades and decades that have told us about the atmospheric winds and atmospheric conditions. And we've measured the atmosphere so much that now we can actually predict the atmospheric currents which means that we can predict things like the weather.

But with the ocean, the ocean has been much more inaccessible. It has been inaccessible because it's very far away from where people live, it's very deep, and it's also it's very salty which means it has been a very corrosive environment for instruments. But what we're able to do now with satellite measurements is get a lot of data over large areas of space and continuously in time. And that information about the salinity, coupled with the information we have about the ocean temperatures because of the NASA satellites, really helps us learn a lot more about the ocean, and the ocean circulation. So one day we will also be able to make predictions about ocean circulation.

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

CLIVAR (Climate Variability and Predictability) is an international research effort focusing on the variability and predictability of the slowly varying components of the climate system. As part of the US contribution to CLIVAR, a Salinity Working Group was formed and charged with:

	1.	Describing the role of ocean salinity in the global water cycle, global ocean circulation, and climate variability;
	2.	Identifying the requirements and challenges for analyzing, observing, and monitoring salinity, as well as simulating processes critical for determining the ocean's role in the transport and storage of salinity; and
	3.	Providing guidance to the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) (and the international community) on observational and scientific activities that should be considered in advance of, and during, the Aquarius mission to improve measurement, analysis, and use of salinity information for the above purposes.

To achieve these goals, sessions on salinity were held at the 2006 and 2008 Ocean Sciences Meetings as well as a workshop at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in May 2006. In July 2007, a CLIVAR white paper on salinity was published (US CLIVAR Report No. 2007-1). The summary and principal recommendations of that report are provided here.

Read and discuss the Priority Recommendations section (p. 83-85).