July 18, 2017 โ During the next four months, NOAA scientists will deploy Saildrone unmanned ocean vehicles to hard-to-reach locales such as the Arctic and the tropical Pacific with the goal of better understanding of how ocean changes affect weather, climate, fisheries and marine mammals.
The Saildrone is wind and solar-powered research vehicle resembling a sailboat, capable of performing tasks at sea such as met ocean data collection, environmental monitoring and fish stock analysis, autonomously or under remote control. For NOAA, the vehicles will soon travel thousands of miles across the ocean, reaching some areas never before surveyed with such specialized technology.
In mid-July, scientists will send off the first unmanned, wind and solar-powered vehicles from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, with two sailing north through the Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean and another transiting the Bering Sea. Traversing Alaskaโs inhospitable waters, the remote-controlled vehicles will track melting ice, measure carbon dioxide in the ocean and count fish, seals and whales.
For the first time, the vehicles will journey through the Bering Strait into the Arctic with a newly adapted system to measure CO2 concentrations.
We want to understand how changes in the Arctic may affect large-scale climate and weather systems as well as ecosystems that support valuable fish stocks,โ said Jessica Cross, an oceanographer at NOAA Researchโs Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, who is using the unmanned system to study how the Arctic Ocean is absorbing carbon dioxide.