Student-Teacher-Researcher Collaboration through NOAA’s Adopt A Drifter Program
Diane Stanitski1, Meghan F Cronin2, Neil Malan3, Isabelle Jane Ansorge4, Lisa M Beal5, Juliet Clair Hermes6, Rick Lumpkin7 and Shaun Dolk7, (1)NOAA, Climate Program Office, Boulder, CO, United States, (2)NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, WA, United States, (3)South African Environmental Observation Network, Egagasini Marine Offshore Systems, Cape Town, South Africa, (4)university of Cape Town, Department of Oceanography, Cape Town, South Africa, (5)University of Miami, Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, Miami, FL, United States, (6)South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON), Cape Town, South Africa, (7)NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML), Miami, FL, United States
Abstract:
NOAA scientists and students in South Africa and the USA performed oceanographic experiments by deploying two surface drifting buoys in the Agulhas Current east of South Africa with the intent to determine the direction and path of each drifter’s movement. The drifters were provided by the Global Drifter Program and the education component supported by the NOAA Adopt A Drifter Program (ADP). In a “surface dispersion” experiment, students in the classes that co-adopted the pair of surface drifters developed hypotheses about the drifters’ paths, including whether they might drift into the Atlantic, Indian, Southern, or Pacific Oceans. They hypothesized why, when, and where the two drifters would separate. As part of the ADP, the collaborating schools tracked the drifters together via the internet.
Several months after the drifters were deployed, a NOAA researcher discussed the surprising results with the collaborating students and teachers, including K-12 school children in George, Western Cape and Mossel Bay, South Africa and Bethesda, Maryland USA. One drifter pair had an interesting path. Although deployed in the center of the Agulhas Current, the pair became entrained in a submesoscale cyclonic vortex that formed as the jet flowed across the continental shelf break. The submesoscale vortex (with the drifter pair) then separated from the jet and leaked into the Atlantic Ocean. The eddy was visible in high-resolution satellite images of the sea surface temperature, but was not resolved in satellite altimetry fields. As discussed in a paper led by University of Cape Town graduate student Neil Malan currently under review, this implies that estimates of Agulhas leakage may be underestimated as they do not include this new pathway provided by submesoscale cyclonic vortices. Data from the adopted drifting buoys contribute to the Global Drifter Program, a component of the Global Ocean Observing System, and can be viewed from the NOAA Adopt a Drifter Program tracking page.
