After sending a fleet of autonomous Saildrones into the path of Hurricane Sam to help improve forecast models, Saildrone has now launched three uncrewed surface vehicles on a mission to sail through the North Atlantic’s swiftest current: the Gulf Stream.
They will be collecting data within the Gulf Stream through the winter months in hopes of learning more about carbon uptake – the process by which oceans absorb carbon.
“There is a lot of uncertainty in ocean carbon uptake – nearly 4 billion tons of CO2 separates the average of the model-based estimates from observation-based estimates.
A group of Saildrone USVs equipped with a special “hurricane wing” recently captured the first-ever live video from inside the eye of the Atlantic category 4 Hurricane Sam.
Data will be sent via satellite in near real-time to help scientists at ECMWF improve their earth-system approach to forecasting and those at the University of Rhode Island working to quantify the Gulf Stream’s role in carbon uptake and predict its stability or vulnerability in the future.