Oceanography | March 2015
SPURS
SPURS
Oceanography
THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE OCEANOGRAPHY SOCIETY
VOL.28, NO.1, MARCH 2015
Salinity Processes in the Upper-ocean Regional Study
Oceanography | Vol.28, No.1
Oceanography | March 2015
86
6–12 hours at surface to
transmit data to satellite
Descent to depth – 6 hours
1,000 m – drift approx. 9 days
Float descends
to begin profile
from a greater
depth – 2,000 m
Temperature
and salinity
profile recorded
during ascent –
6 hours
Total cycle
time – 10 days
1%
Land: 15,662
Rivers: 1.25 ± 0.1 Sv
97%
Oceans: 1,335,040
0.001%
Atmosphere: 12.7
85%
Evaporation
13.0 ± 1.3 Sv
15%
Evaporation
~ 2.7 Sv
77%
Precipitation
12.2 ± 1.2 Sv
23%
Precipitation
~ 3.5 Sv
2%
Ice (Land & Ocean): 25,540
66
Special Issue on the Salinity Processes in the
Upper-ocean Regional Study
14
SPURS: Salinity Processes in the Upper-ocean Regional Study—
The North Atlantic Experiment
By E. Lindstrom, F. Bryan, and R. Schmitt
20
Ocean Salinity and the Global Water Cycle
By P.J. Durack
32
Differences Among Subtropical Surface Salinity Patterns
By A.L. Gordon, C.F. Giulivi, J. Busecke, and F.M. Bingham
40
A River of Salt
By R.W. Schmitt and A. Blair
46
Data Management Support for the SPURS Atlantic Field Campaign
By F.M. Bingham, P. Li, Z. Li, Q. Vu, and Y. Chao
56
Salinity and Temperature Balances at the SPURS Central Mooring
During Fall and Winter
By J.T. Farrar, L. Rainville, A.J. Plueddemann, W.S. Kessler, C. Lee, B.A. Hodges,
R.W. Schmitt, J.B. Edson, S.C. Riser, C.C. Eriksen, and D.M. Fratantoni
66
Variability in Near-Surface Salinity from Hours to Decades in the Eastern
North Atlantic: The SPURS Region
By S.C. Riser, J. Anderson, A. Shcherbina, and E. D’Asaro
78
Mixed-Layer Salinity Budget in the SPURS Region on Seasonal to
Interannual Time Scales
By S. Dong, G. Goni, and R. Lumpkin
86
The Freshwater Balance Over the North Atlantic SPURS Domain from
Aquarius Satellite Salinity, OSCAR Satellite Surface Currents, and
Some Simplified Approaches
By K. Dohan, H.-Y. Kao, and G.S.E. Lagerloef
96
Sea Surface Salinity Observations with Lagrangian Drifters in the Tropical
North Atlantic During SPURS: Circulation, Fluxes, and Comparisons with
Remotely Sensed Salinity from Aquarius
By L.R. Centurioni, V. Hormann, Y. Chao, G. Reverdin, J. Font, and D.-K. Lee
106 Variability and Interleaving of Upper-Ocean Water Masses Surrounding
the North Atlantic Salinity Maximum
By A.Y. Shcherbina, E.A. D’Asaro, S.C. Riser, and W.S. Kessler
114 Surface Salinity in the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre During the STRASSE/
SPURS Summer 2012 Cruise
By G. Reverdin, S. Morisset, L. Marié, D. Bourras, G. Sutherland, B. Ward,
J. Salvador, J. Font, Y. Cuypers, L. Centurioni, V. Hormann, N. Koldziejczyk,
J. Boutin, F. D’Ovidio, F. Nencioli, N. Martin, D. Diverres, G. Alory, and R. Lumpkin
contents
VO L . 2 8 , N O.1 , M A R C H 2 0 1 5
Oceanography
20
Oceanography | March 2015
Oceanography | Vol.28, No.1
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SPECIAL ISSUE SPONSOR
Production of this issue of Oceanography was
supported by the US National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA).
SPECIAL ISSUE GUEST EDITORS
Eric Lindstrom (NASA), Frank Bryan
(National Center for Atmospheric
Research), and Ray Schmitt (Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution)
124 Regional Rainfall Measurements Using the Passive Aquatic Listener During
the SPURS Field Campaign
By J. Yang, S.C. Riser, J.A. Nystuen, W.E. Asher, and A.T. Jessup
134 Sharing the Importance of Ocean Salinity Beyond the Scientific Community
By A. deCharon, C. Companion, R. Cope, and L. Taylor
142 Three-Dimensional Dynamics of Freshwater Lenses in the Ocean’s
Near-Surface Layer
By A.V. Soloviev, S. Matt, and A. Fujimura
150 From Salty to Fresh—Salinity Processes in the Upper-ocean Regional
Study-2 (SPURS-2): Diagnosing the Physics of a Rainfall-Dominated
Salinity Minimum
By the SPURS-2 Planning Group
REGULAR ISSUE FEATURE
160 The NOAA Vents Program 1983 to 2013: Thirty Years of Ocean Exploration
and Research
By S.R. Hammond, R.W. Embley, and E.T. Baker
DEPARTMENTS
04
QUARTERDECK. Celebrating Five Years of Ocean Exploration
Supplements to Oceanography
By E.S. Kappel
06
FROM THE PRESIDENT. Ensuring a Healthy Funding Environment
in Ocean Sciences
By M.S. Lozier
07
TRIBUTE. An Old Salt Retires
By R. Schmitt
08
COMMUNITY NEWS. Mark Cane: 2014 Fellow of
The Oceanography Society
Contributed by R. Seager
10
RIPPLE MARKS. Last of the Ice Bears? Climate Change Threatens Iconic
Polar Bears’ Food Sources
By C.L. Dybas
174 BOOK REVIEWS. An Introduction to Ocean Remote Sensing • Sea-Level
Science: Understanding Tides, Surges, Tsunamis and Mean Sea-Level
Changes • Double Diffusive Convection
181 CAREER PROFILES. Robert L. Burger, Associate Dean, Faculty of Arts and
Sciences, Yale University • Heather M.H. Goldstone, Science Editor, WGBH
and WCAI National Public Radio Stations
160
ON THE COVER
A montage of photographs from a SPURS cruise on R/V Knorr (cour-
tesy of Eric Lindstrom, NASA Headquarters) and a map depict-
ing annual mean ocean surface salinity in the Atlantic Ocean
(September 2012–September 2013) from NASA’s Aquarius satel-
lite (courtesy of Oleg Melnichenko, University of Hawaii). Red color
indicates higher salinity, while yellow and then blue are progres-
sively fresher waters. SPURS examined the saltiest waters in the
middle of the North Atlantic basin.
Oceanography | Vol.28, No.1
Vol.28, No.1, March 2015
Oceanography
SPURS
SPURS
Oceanography
THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE OCEANOGRAPHY SOCIETY
VOL.28, NO.1, MARCH 2015
Salinity Processes in the Upper-ocean Regional Study
Oceanography | March 2015
Editor
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Oceanography
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its application through research and education, to
promote communication among oceanographers,
and to provide a constituency for consensus-
building across all the disciplines of the field.
OFFICERS
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Oceanography | March 2015
Oceanography | Vol.28, No.1
New Frontiers in Ocean Exploration: The E/V Nautilus 2014 Gulf of
Mexico and Caribbean Field Season is the fifth consecutive March sup-
plement to accompany Oceanography (see http://www.tos.org/ocean_
exploration). These booklets provide details about the innovative tech-
nologies Exploration Vessel Nautilus deploys to investigate the seafloor
and explain how telepresence can both convey the excitement of ocean
exploration to global audiences in real time and allow scientists on shore
to participate in expeditions. The supplements also describe the vari-
ety of educational programs the Ocean Exploration Trust supports in
partnership with schools, museums, and aquariums; internships
that bring high school students, undergraduates, grad-
uate students, and teachers on board Nautilus; and
the preliminary results from the past year’s field
season. Through these supplements, we have
explored the geology, chemistry, biology,
and archaeology of the Mediterranean,
Aegean, Black, and Caribbean Seas. In cel-
ebration of these accomplishments, I share
just a few of my favorite images captured by
Nautilus surveys over these past five years.
Next March, we look forward to bringing
you the story of the first Nautilus adventure
in the Pacific Ocean.
Celebrating Five Years of
Ocean Exploration
Supplements to Oceanography
QUARTERDECK
Oceanography | Vol.28, No.1
Ellen S. Kappel, Editor
Oceanography | March 2015
The northern part of the Kolumbo volca-
no’s crater floor, northeast of Santorini in
the Aegean Sea, has an extensive hydro-
thermal vent field where massive sulfide
chimneys are venting high-temperature
fluids (>200°C) and gases. (a) ROV sam-
pling massive sulfide chimney. (b) Broken
vent chimney revealing zonation of hydro-
thermal minerals. (c) Sampling gases
being emitted at a hydrothermal vent
using a gas-tight container.
Above. Chersonesos A is a Byzantine shipwreck dated to the
ninth to eleventh centuries CE that lies at 135 m depth in the
suboxic zone of the Black Sea. This site was the focus of initial
excavation, high-resolution mapping, environmental monitor-
ing, and testing for an underwater museum. The inset shows
a jar recovered from the site for analysis and conservation.
Below. Wreck of M/S Dodekanisos, dis-
covered off the Datça Peninsula, Turkey,
with ROV Hercules hovering over the
bow. Left. Multibeam microbathymetry
map of the ship from a high-resolution
survey conducted at 15 m altitude with
Hercules. Sediment mounds resulting
from impact with the bottom are visible
on the wreck’s port side.
Oceanography | March 2015
Left. The southeast flank of Eratosthenes Seamount,
eastern Mediterranean Sea, hosted numerous chemo-
synthetic vent communities consisting of tubeworms,
clams, urchins, and crabs located around cracks with
chemical staining.
Oceanography | Vol.28, No.1
M
y graduate students’ notes from their fluid dynam-
ics class are eerily familiar. I recognize their anxiety
about oral qualifying exams, and also their glee about a snow
day. The camaraderie they share along their trek though gradu-
ate school brings back great memories, as does the delight of a
research breakthrough after weeks, maybe even months, of frus-
tration. What is different is the concern about research funding
that seems to permeate the graduate school experience today.
Apparently, the graduate student trek is now a bit steeper.
My graduate school journey began at the University of
Washington School of Oceanography in 1984. There was cer-
tainly talk about funding then, just not the lack of it. The avail-
ability of research funding was simply an element of the graduate
school experience, along with classes, cruises, exams, and that
thing called a dissertation. Thirty years is a fair stretch of time,
and over those years, much about ocean research has changed.
Today’s graduate students can access vast amounts of ocean data
collected by sophisticated instruments developed over those
years. Ocean circulation models have made dizzyingly impres-
sive strides, and their output has helped to break down the fairly
stout barrier between observational and modeling studies that
existed in 1984. International partnerships are easier to come by,
enriching students’ experiences. All in all, these advances have
widened the window of research opportunities for graduate stu-
dents in the twenty-first century. It is hard to imagine another
time when oceanographers addressed such relevant and com-
pelling research questions. And yet, graduate students, post-
docs, and certainly early career oceanographers see the window
of opportunity narrowing, not widening. How so? It is because
all those ideas, data, and computational resources need funding
to convert their potential to advances in ocean science.
Veteran oceanographers may differ on the merits of the
individual recommendations contained within the newly
released National Research Council report, Sea Change:
2015–2025 Decadal Survey of Ocean Sciences (http://www.nap.
edu/ catalog/21655/sea-change-2015-2025-decadal-survey-of-
ocean-sciences), but there is one sentiment that likely unites all
of us—the desire to ensure that young scientists with creative
ideas and research promise look at ocean research as a place
of opportunity. As a member of the committee that wrote the
NRC document, I can report that while each committee mem-
ber brought his or her own envelope of concerns, there was one
common concern: the impact of growing infrastructure costs
on the ability of the National Science Foundation’s Division of
Ocean Sciences to maintain a healthy funding environment for
all oceanographers, but in particular for those entering the field.
The meaning of a “healthy funding environment” was certainly
debated. What was not debated, though, was that the current
funding environment is not healthy, and that we certainly aren’t
headed in a direction that will improve it. Hence, the commit-
tee’s recommendation to substantially cut infrastructure costs—
we did not see another way to move in the direction we desired.
The bulk of the committee’s discussions focused on finances.
Readers of the report will likely focus on the recommended cuts
to infrastructure and the potential for research program fund-
ing. But ultimately, it is our intellectual resources that drive us
forward, and they must be continually renewed in order for
our field to remain vibrant. In order to attract bright investi-
gators, they must see a future, a wide window of opportunity
in ocean sciences.
At the end of the report, there is a short paragraph titled
Looking Ahead. It reads:
Attaining the visionary goals presented at the beginning of
this report will require a diverse and talented group of research-
ers; rapid adoption of new technologies to measure the ocean
in novel and cost-effective ways; elimination of the barriers to
interdisciplinary and interagency research; enhancement of
cost-shared partnerships across funding agencies, national bor-
ders, and sectors; and innovative educational programs that are
aligned with this vision. The committee strongly believes that
the ocean sciences community (including researchers and pro-
gram management) [is] prepared to strategically meet these
challenges and emerge with an even more innovative and com-
pelling future for the ocean sciences.
That compelling future requires funding so that our science
can attract the diverse and talented group of researchers who
will chart the future course for our field.
M. Susan Lozier, TOS President
Ensuring a
Healthy Funding Environment
in Ocean Sciences
FROM THE PRESIDENT
Oceanography | March 2015
In September and October 2012, R/V Knorr
operated in the North Atlantic to deploy auton-
omous platforms that would collect measure-
ments over the following year for the first phase
of the Salinity Processes in the Upper-ocean
Regional Study (SPURS-1). When the ship was
retired in late 2014, after 44 years of oceano-
graphic service, a plaque on the bridge (see
above, right) still displayed the vessel’s motto,
"Sal sume sub sole," which was provided by
Emerson Hiller, the first captain.
Hiller had also been captain of R/V Chain,
whose stack sported a logo of a strong arm and
a chain along with the Latin motto “Laboramus,”
or “We work.” He thought that was a bit pre-
sumptuous, and for the Knorr he wanted the
less somber motto “More fun under the Sun,”
and searched for someone to put it into Latin.
Townsend Hornor, President of the Associates
of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
(WHOI), gave the project to his wife Betsy,
who was trustee of a girls’ school in New York.
According to the WHOI oral history archives,
Hiller says: “I got a long letter from the school
explaining how they spent a whole month on
this project to put into Latin ‘more fun under
the Sun.’ In their research, the students found
that early Roman soldiers were paid in salt, a
very valuable commodity, and the soldiers
exchanged it for fun and entertainment. The
students thought it reasonable to employ salt
or sal to mean the same as ‘fun and enter-
tainment’ and came up with the slogan Sal
summi sub sole—more fun under the Sun—
more salt, actually. “
We
noticed
the
plaque
during
the
September/October 2012 deployment cruise,
and decided it was an excellent motto for
SPURS as well. However, my high school Latin
nagged at me a bit; something did not seem
quite right. Google Translate tells us that the
motto as actually printed means to “Take salt
under the sun.” “Take salt” reminded me of
the salt tablet dispensers common on ships
when I first started going to sea, before people
worried about their blood pressure. Perhaps
the inscriber misunderstood what the school-
girls actually conveyed.
The originally intended Sal summi sub sole
is well suited to SPURS. Actually, Sal summa
sub sole or “highest salt under the sun”
would be even better. We enjoyed wonder-
fully sunny skies at the center of the subtrop-
ical high during the cruise. We also measured
the highest surface salinities ever reported for
this area, just reaching 37.8 psu. Higher salin-
ities are found in the Mediterranean and Red
Seas, but the North Atlantic salinity maximum is
the saltiest spot in the open ocean. It was salt-
ier than ever when we were there in 2012, con-
sistent with the trend of “salty getting saltier,
fresh getting fresher” associated with the inten-
sifying water cycle over the ocean (see Durack,
2015, in this issue).
While we were at sea, we got word that the
Navy had decided to name Knorr’s replace-
ment ship R/V Neil Armstrong after the Navy
pilot who first walked on the moon. He had
passed away a few weeks before we sailed,
and his ashes were scattered at sea off the
Atlantic coast of Florida, at the same time and
latitude that we were working, though well to
our west. This event provided even more con-
nection of the Knorr with the NASA-funded
SPURS project. NASA had named the space
shuttles for oceanographic research vessels
and now an oceanographic ship was to be
named after a NASA hero. In recognition of the
occasion, we managed to make a call to the
International Space Station and
discussed the commonalities
of ocean and space explora-
tion with Commander
“Suni” Williams as
she whizzed
by overhead.
It was sad to see the Knorr retire in 2014. The
ship had a hand in many of the most significant
oceanographic discoveries of the last 44 years,
including the first samples of the Mid-Atlantic
Ridge, the GEOSECS (Geochemical Ocean
Sections Study) surveys, new life forms at deep-
sea hydrothermal vents, finding RMS Titanic,
doing many long sections for the World Ocean
Circulation Experiment (WOCE), and prob-
ing the ice-bound Arctic. Knorr logged more
than 1.36 million miles for science (the equiva-
lent of more than two round trips to the Moon
or 55 trips around Earth), visited 46 countries,
crossed the equator 58 times, and made it as
far north as 80°13.0'N, as far south as 68°41.3'S.
From the start, Captain Hiller instilled a strong
ethic of service to science throughout the crew,
from deck hands to oilers, engineers, and offi-
cers, and this continued through last fall. It is
a very capable ship and will be sorely missed
from the US oceanographic fleet. Fortunately,
its crew will transfer to the Armstrong when it
arrives at WHOI, and there they will carry on the
tradition of can-do service for science. They are
going to need a motto for the new ship, and I
have one to suggest…
REFERENCE
Durack, P.J. 2015. Ocean salinity and the global water
cycle. Oceanography 28(1):20–31, http://dx.doi.org/
10.5670/oceanog.2015.03.
AUTHOR. Ray Schmitt (rschmitt@whoi.edu) is Senior
Scientist, Department of Physical Oceanography,
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole,
MA, USA.
An Old Salt Retires
By Ray Schmitt
TRIBUTE
Oceanography | March 2015
Oceanography | Vol.28, No.1
Mark Cane
2014 Fellow of The Oceanography Society
Contributed by Richard Seager
Mark Cane, who was honored in 2014 as
a Fellow of The Oceanography Society, is
the G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth
and Environmental Sciences at Columbia
University, based at Columbia’s Lamont-
Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades,
New York. He received a bachelor’s degree
from Harvard in 1965 and his PhD from
MIT in 1975. He moved to Lamont in
1985 and has made his research home
there ever since. His unusual career has
ranged from theoretical equatorial ocean
dynamics to studying links between cli-
mate variability and social conflict. In all
cases, he has applied his piercing intel-
lect, deep intuition, and methodological
rigor to make major advances in under-
standing of the ocean, the climate sys-
tem, and how climate variability and
change impact human society. In partic-
ular, Mark Cane is a founding father of
seasonal-to-interannual climate predic-
tion, a revolutionary field in ocean and
climate science.
Mark’s earliest contributions were
among his most fundamental when, work-
ing with Ed Sarachik, he developed the
theory of equatorial ocean wave dynam-
ics in a series of papers of tremendous
mathematical ingenuity and elegance.
This was a major advance in geophysi-
cal fluid dynamics that, perhaps unbe-
knownst to Mark at the time, also paved
the way for development of seasonal-
to-interannual prediction. By the early
1980s, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation
(ENSO) had grabbed people’s attention,
but, despite Bjerknes’ pioneering work
on positive tropical atmosphere-ocean
feedbacks, there was no understanding
COMMUNITY NEWS
of how the system oscillated between
El Niños and La Niñas.
Mark and his graduate student, Steve
Zebiak, set about building a numerical
model of the tropical Pacific atmosphere-
ocean system using an ocean model based
on Mark’s earlier equatorial wave theory.
The Zebiak-Cane model simulated ENSO
with a quite remarkable degree of real-
ism, partly because of the clever and wise
choice to construct the model as a lin-
earization about the observed climato-
logical mean basic state. State-of-the-art
coupled models retain notorious tropical
biases, and Mark’s decision to bypass that
whole matter probably advanced predic-
tion by a couple of decades. This decision
reflects his great dexterity and flexibility
in approaching scientific investigation:
he produced both a series of mathemati-
cally elegant and highly formal papers on
wave dynamics and a model that drew on
that work but, by necessity, introduced
simplifications and fixes that could only
be justified with intuition and after-the-
fact proof that the model worked. The
field of seasonal-to-interannual (S/I) pre-
diction can thank Mark for his unique
ability to combine brilliant theories with
utter pragmatism.
Before fully understanding the phys-
ical basis for the growth and decay of
El Niño events, Mark and Steve applied
the model to hindcasting past El Niños,
initializing them with sea surface tem-
perature anomalies seasons in advance
of the event. Because this proved suc-
cessful, they then, in a bold (and some
said rash) move, in summer 1986 pub-
lished and disseminated a prediction of
the 1986/87 El Niño event. In Henry IV
Part I, Glendower says, “I can call spirits
from the vasty deep,” to which Hotspur
retorts, “Why, so can I, or so can any
man; But will they come when you do
call for them?” The answer to that ques-
tion is that, in the winter of 1986/87 when
Mark summoned forth an El Niño from
the tropical Pacific Ocean, it did indeed
come. And it was not a flash in the pan
but the birth of S/I prediction, Mark’s
baby, a startling success that revolution-
ized climate science.
Mark realized the potential of what
he had unleashed, and putting his deep
sense of social justice into practice,
joined with Ed Sarachik to spearhead
the creation by the US National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration of
the International Research Institute for
Climate Prediction (now IRI for Climate
and Society). IRI was and remains unique
in that its work involves not just S/I pre-
diction but also application of the predic-
tions to problems in such areas as agri-
culture, water resources, hazards, and
public health across the world, with a spe-
cial focus on the developing world. From
its pilot project days in the early 1990s
to the large and dynamic organization it
is now, IRI proves the value of seamless
prediction and adaptation where climate,
agricultural, and health scientists, along
with others, work side by side and where
oceanographic and atmospheric research
inform and are informed by on-the-
ground decision making in, say, tropical
Africa. In 1979 when Mark was writing
“Forced Baroclinic Ocean Motions III:
The Linear Equatorial Bounded Case”