Water quality monitoring is an integral tool in the management of freshwater resources. It identifies trends in water quality and tracks the effects of anthropogenic influences such as shoreline development and eutrophication and the successes of restoration actions. Remote sensing presents a cost efficient complementary approach for a more comprehensive assessment of our freshwater resources. The open access to Earth observation data limits the costs to software maintenance and data processing costs and makes the integration of remote sensing into water quality monitoring programs more attractive for natural resources management agencies. The operational annual satellite retrieval of the water clarity for thousands of lakes across Wisconsin from Landsat 7 ETM+ and Landsat 8 OLI-TIRS data assists the Wisconsin DNR in trophic state assessments for the State of Wisconsin. The results are shared within the Wisconsin DNR for the Wisconsin Water Quality Reports to Congress in compliance with Section 305(b) of the Clean Water Act and with state and local water quality managers, lake organizations, and the public. Summer water clarity maps are shared through the Wisconsin Lakes & Aquatic Invasive Species Mapping Tool and GIS data portal. Current remote sensing activities at the Wisconsin DNR include the transition of image processing efforts from a desktop to cloud environment, the collection of field and satellite match-up data for waterbodies across Wisconsin to support algorithm development and validation efforts by external partners, and the development of strategies for the integration of satellite data products into our water quality monitoring program. This poster provides insights in the different components of the successful integration of satellite data analysis into our water quality monitoring program and can serve as a roadmap for natural resources management agencies.

The West Florida Shelf (WFS) is an extremely important area for both commercial and recreational fisheries. However, the lack of habitat maps in this area makes planning fisheries independent monitoring surveys difficult, and hinders the ability to manage and monitor fish stocks and ecosystems over time. As of 2015, only 5% of the WFS had been mapped in high resolution using a multibeam echosounder with little effort expended to infer and verify habitat type. In 2015, The Continental Shelf Characterization, Assessment, and Mapping Project (C-SCAMP) began using a multibeam echosounder and towed underwater video to map benthic habitats and improve our understanding of fish-habitat relationships on the WFS. For this study, high resolution multibeam bathymetry and co-registered backscatter data were collected and processed. A portion of these areas were then “ground-truthed” using towed video transects to assess habitat type and identify fish. Habitat maps were created using a statistical classification model that predicts benthic habitat type based on the acoustic signature. Progress towards a unified habitat map of the West Florida Shelf will be presented including habitat interpretation of multibeam surfaces collected by other groups prior to this project, particularly focusing on those within Marine Protected Areas. Applications of the resultant habitat maps for fisheries management will be demonstrated and discussed.

In the past 30 years, Cook Inlet, Alaska (CI) has experienced significant changes in environmental conditions from anthropogenic and atmospheric events including the Exxon Valdez Oil spill, multiple ENSO cycles, and the recent 2014-2016 Pacific marine heatwave known as “the Blob”. The latter event coincided with the appearance of several well-documented marine species (e.g. ocean sunfish, skipjack tuna, and several species of copepods) common along the coasts of California to Washington in the Gulf of Alaska, and CI. As part of the Gulf Watch Alaska long-term monitoring program, CI zooplankton were collected to understand how these disturbances affect ecological patterns in zooplankton associated with the nearshore marine system. From 2012 to 2017, zooplankton were collected monthly along five nearshore transects across CI with a 0.6 m bongo net (333 µm mesh) towed vertically from 50m to the surface (n = 396). Tows were subsampled and microscopically enumerated for species composition and abundance. GAMs showed that abundance peaked mid-June (2533.70±189.64 no. m-3) and gradually declined to a low in January (9.40±224.80 no. m-3). Of the 237 species identified, 77 of the most abundant species (>5% presence) were used in an indicator species analysis (ISA) to show seasonal shifts in community composition. In early spring, the community was comprised of Neocalanus spp. copepods and ichthyoplankton (e.g. Clupea pallasi). Progressing into late spring, the community switched to a larvae (barnacles, polychaetes, euphausiids) dominated structure that also included copepods common to the region (Pseudocalanus spp. and Calanus marshallae). In the late summer through early fall, communities were comprised of gelatinous zooplankton. A year after the marine heatwave dissipated (2017), the community dominated by large copepods and ichthyoplankton was replaced by a community comprised of the larvae and smaller common copepods. Beginning in 2016, the last year of heatwave, a fall community characterized warm-water associated copepods (Paracalanus parvus and Corycaeus anglicus) increased significantly (9 events 2012-2015; 20 events in 2016) and continued to dominate the communities in the fall of 2017 (12 events), suggesting effects of anomalously warm-waters may persist after the marine heatwave dissipated.

The assessment of planktonic organisms is a prevailing task in marine ecology and oceanography as planktons form the principal food source for consumers at higher trophic levels. Reliable estimates on the production at the lowermost trophic levels are thus an integral part for the management of marine ecosystems. Traditional plankton sampling and analysis are limited in their spatial and temporal context of the organisms’ environment, which are often critical clues to a biologist for its habitation. In addition, ship-based sampling as described leads to a high level of uncertainty in the estimation, since point measurements that are intermittent in space and time are used (Reid et al 2003; Lermusiaux 2006; Vannier 2018). A disruptive change in approach to tackle this problem is currently taking place, enabled by the use of autonomous robots (Henthorn et al 2006) and augmented by visual sensing for real-time analysis (Ohman et al 2019; AILARON 2019). Approaches providing taxonomy estimates from time-series image analysis (Sosik and Olson 2008) or via computer simulations (Roberts and Jaffe 2007), with the recent advances in deep learning, enabled by the computational power of multicore CPUs and GPUs, made possible processing and classification of large datasets while learning higher level representations. Enhanced traditional machine learning methods are driven by multiple kernel learning, where general features are combined with robust features and new types from multiple views are defined in order to generate multiple classifiers (Py et al 2016; Dai et al 2016; Lee et al 2016; Moniruzzaman et al 2017). In this paper, we present recent DL methods for microscopic organisms’ identification and classification. A proposed DL architecture (cf. figure 2) reported an accuracy of 95% as opposed to (90% - 93% cf. table 2) achieved by the state-of-the-art networks: ZooplanktoNet, VGGNet, AlexNet, ResNet, and GoogleNet, while training over a labeled dataset of extracted objects from images of plankton organisms captured in-situ (cf. table 1). COAPNet is embedded into a light-weight autonomous vehicle (LAUV) for real-time in-situ plankton taxa identification and classification. The LAUV in turn utilizes the feedback from the image analysis to constantly update a probability density map that further enables an adaptive sampling process.

ESA is building on almost 15 years of continuous Fiducial Reference Measurements (FRM) from UK-funded shipborne radiometers by establishing a service to provide historic and ongoing FRM measurements to the wider SST community through an International SST FRM Radiometer Network (ships4sst). The ships4sst is open for partners around the world, currently compromising of partners from the UK (University of Southampton, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Space ConneXions), Denmark (Danish Meteorological Institute) and France (Ifremer) and will not only collect Shipborne radiometer data but also use the data to validate SLSTR and other satellite SST products with the Felyx MDB tool. Included in the service is a long term data archive of the FRM datasets at Ifremer where the data will be stored in the ships4sst netCDF L2R format. We will show examples of the ships4sst data and demonstrate its use with the newest SLSTR validation results from the ships4sst network regions, showing that SLSTR performs at least as well as its predecessor AATSR. We will also show results of the SLSTR A and B units during the Sentinel-3 tandem phase in 2018 by using triple collocations on the ships4sst FRM data and the SLSTR units on Sentinel 3 A and B.

Insights from the RAPID–MOCHA observation network in the North Atlantic have motivated a recent focus on the South Atlantic, where water masses are exchanged with the neighboring Indian and Pacific ocean basins. Moreover, the South Atlantic meridional overturning circulation basin-wide array (SAMBA) was recently launched to monitor variability in the South Atlantic MOC (SAMOC) at 34.5ºS. In this study, we are interested in understanding the processes which generate volume transport variability that would be observed at this latitude band. To perform this attribution, we compute sensitivities of the SAMOC at 34ºS to atmospheric state variables (e.g. wind stress, precipitation) using the adjoint of a global ocean model which is fit to a vast number of ocean observations over the past 20 years. These sensitivities isolate the impact from each atmospheric variable, and highlight the oceanic mechanisms, such as Kelvin and Rossby waves, which carry atmospheric forcing perturbations to the SAMOC. The domain of influence for the SAMOC is shown to be quite broad, covering neighboring ocean basins even on short time scales. This result differs from what has previously been shown in the North Atlantic, where Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) variability is largely governed by dynamics confined to that basin. We convolve historical forcing variability from ERA-Interim with the computed sensitivities in order to attribute seasonal to interannual SAMOC variability to each atmospheric component. The seasonal cycle of the SAMOC is therefore shown to be largely driven by local zonal wind forcing. Interannual variability, however, is shown to have originated from remote locations across the globe, including a nontrivial component originating from the tropical Pacific. We conclude with preliminary results which employ both modeling results and an analysis of modern altimetry observations to show how El Niño Southern Oscillation variability might influence the South Atlantic.

This study is motivated by the observation that after a wave breaking event in the ocean, the residual surface foam left in the wake of the breaker rapidly cools down. The relationship between the cooling foam and the characteristics of the breaking wave such as bubble plume dynamics, visible surface foam, and energy dissipation is investigated experimentally. Previous studies have suggested that the decay time of the visible foam can be used to determine the dynamics of the subsurface bubble plume, and to estimate the energy dissipation by the breaking process. But the foam decay process can be greatly affected by the surfactant concentration in the ocean and this effect need to be accounted for independently. We present a new approach that utilizes the thermal signature of the cooling foam to infer the breaking characteristics and is less sensitive to surfactant concentration. The experiments are conducted in a wave flume that is equipped with a piston-type wavemaker and is filled with salt water. In order to study the effects of surfactants on the cooling of the residual foam, two sets of experiments are carried out; In the first set clean salt water is used and in the second set, Triton X-100 at a concentration of approximately 200 mg/L is added to the water. Breaking waves are generated using the focusing wavepacket technique and are designed to cover a wide range of slopes and breaking intensities. The bubble plume and the surface foam are imaged using visible cameras and the surface temperature is captured using an IR camera with an overlapping field of view with the visible foam camera. It is observed that the average temperature of the foam initially increases after the passage of a breaking wave due to the disruption of the cool skin layer, but the foam starts to cool down soon after the bubble plume has subsided, and the foam regeneration is not sustained by the bubbles anymore. It is found that the time from the start of the breaking process to the onset of cooling of the foam (τcool) scales with the decay time of the bubble plume (τplume), energy dissipation, and the wavepacket slope of the breakers. It is also observed that the foam decay time is prolonged greatly by the presence of additional surfactants (consistent with the literature), but the bubble plume decay time and the onset of cooling of the foam are not significantly affected.

The Dungeness crab (Metacarcinus magister) fishery is one of the highest value fisheries in the US Pacific Northwest, but its catch size fluctuates widely across years. Although the underlying causes of this variability are not well understood, the abundance of M. magister megalopae has been linked to recruitment into the adult fishery four years later. These pelagic megalopae are exposed to a range of ocean conditions during their dispersal period, which may drive their occurrence patterns. Environmental exposure history has been found to be important for some pelagic organisms, so we hypothesized that inclusion of environmental exposure history would improve our ability to predict M. magister megalopae occurrence patterns compared to using ‘in situ’ conditions alone. We combined local observations of M. magister megalopae and regional simulations of ocean conditions to model megalopae occurrence using a generalized linear model (GLM) framework. The modeled ocean conditions were extracted from J-SCOPE, a high-resolution coupled physical-biogeochemical model. The analysis included variables from J-SCOPE identified in the literature as important for larval crab occurrence: temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen concentration, nitrate concentration, phytoplankton concentration, aragonite and calcite saturation state, and pH. GLMs were developed with either in situ ocean conditions or environmental exposure histories generated using particle tracking experiments. We found that inclusion of exposure history improved the ability of the GLMs to predict megalopae occurrence. Of the five swimming behaviors used to simulate megalopae dispersal, several behaviors generated GLMs with superior fits to the observations, so a biological ensemble of these models was constructed. Our results highlight the importance of including exposure history in larval occurrence modeling and help provide a method for predicting pelagic megalopae occurrence. This work is a step towards developing a forecast product to support management of the fishery.

Insights from half a century investigating seafloor hydrothermal circulation on Earth can inform exploration on other Ocean Worlds. Early data/models for Earth provided useful predictions for flow at rift axes, but interpretations of the distribution of subseafloor circulation were revised significantly as data and simulations improved. Lessons learned for Earth systems elucidate how investigators might assess hydrothermal processes on other Ocean Worlds. Basin-scale morphology and heat flow indicate whether conduction explains the flux or cooling by seawater advection occurs. Detailed sonar mapping reveals areas where high flux is most likely. Seismicity patterns suggest different modes of circulation: East Pacific circulation is mapped via microseismicity within porous basaltic crust; Regional seismicity in the Atlantic highlights detachment-dominated rift segments, where faults channel circulation, sometimes within peridotite blocks that react with seawater. Exothermic serpentinization, also inferred for the lower ocean crust near subduction zones, should impart detectable temperature (T) signals. High-T/-flux circulation may be recognized with remote sensing (sonar, thermistors, chemical sensors, cameras) at the seafloor whereas low-T/-flux systems are difficult to identify. Modeling examines factors that influence hydrothermal circulation. Early models were simple single-pass cases; later data and more complex models show circulation includes multi-pass convection that can be 3D, unstable, and strongly guided by permeability patterns. Borehole observatories reveal heterogeneity in fluid chemistry and crustal microbiology. Interpreting Ocean World hydrothermal conditions will be challenging, but some fundamental inferences for Earth’s seafloor hydrothermal systems have proven robust. Early studies generated testable hypotheses, advanced instrumentation and simulations, and helped focus interdisciplinary discovery.

Alterations in the ocean and polar and mountain cryosphere from climate change have the potential for far-reaching impacts on ecosystems and human systems all over the world. The IPCC Special Report on Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) was prepared in response to proposals of member governments and observer organisations for Special Reports assessing highly policy-relevant issues. This report focuses on observed and projected changes in the ocean and cryosphere; impacts, vulnerability and risks to ecosystems and human systems, as well as adaptation options. The SROCC is structured in six chapters: Framing and context of the report; high mountain areas; polar regions; sea level rise and implications for low lying islands, coasts and communities; changing ocean, marine ecosystems, and dependent communities; extremes, abrupt changes and managing risks; together with an integrative cross-chapter box on low-lying islands and coasts. Over 100 scientists from 36 countries led the assessment of the latest scientific knowledge in more than two years of intense work. This presentation will provide some background information, an overview on the milestones during report development and focus on the key messages from the report’s Summary for Policymakers.

The mechanisms by which time-dependent wind stress anomalies at mid-latitudes can force variability in the meridional overturning circulation at low latitudes are explored. It is shown that winds are effective at forcing remote variability in the overturning circulation when forcing periods are near the mid-latitude baroclinic Rossby wave basin-crossing timescale. Remote overturning is required by an imbalance in the mid-latitude mass storage and release resulting from the dependence of the Rossby wave phase speed on latitude. A heuristic theory is developed that predicts the strength and frequency-dependence of the remote overturning well when compared to a two-layer numerical model. The theory indicates that the variable overturning strength, relative to the anomalous Ekman transport, depends primarily on the ratio of the meridional spatial scale of the anomalous wind stress to its latitude. For strongly forced systems, a mean deep western boundary current can also significantly enhance the overturning variability at all latitudes. For sufficiently large thermocline displacements, the deep western boundary current alternates between interior and near-boundary pathways in response to fluctuations in the wind, leading to large anomalies in the volume of North Atlantic Deep Water stored at mid-latitudes and in the downstream deep western boundary current transport.

In 2012, Aquatec launched an equipment award scheme for postgraduate students and early career scientists. Successful recipients with limited budgets gain free access to high quality subsea instrumentation for a laboratory or ‘eld campaign of up to three months, plus a travel grant to allow them to present their work at a conference. So far there have been 11 successful awardees who have applied from or deployed instruments in 13 countries spanning ’ve continents, in *umes, lakes, rivers, and coastal seas. In this paper, we present an overview of the most successful award projects. We also evaluate the impact of the scheme on the award recipients’ chosen project work and how it in*uenced their future career. The evaluation draws on analysis of the recipient study reports and the use of questionnaires and interviews. The scheme has also suffered the occasional setback. We attempt to identify some of the potential pitfalls of such a program, and highlight the key factors that lead not only to the best student experience, but also a positive outcome for the awarding company

The need for extended and comprehensive ocean observations is ever-growing. Global challenges such as changing climate, pollution and sustainable resource management demand for a thorough data base and models to provide the basis for enhanced decision taking. These endeavors are costly and can only be achieved to enough extend if an efficient collaboration of all the stakeholders involved can be realized. One foundation for this needed collaboration is represented by the large amount of research and development projects and assessment initiatives in which researchers from scientific institutions and representatives from the private sector work together globally. For over more than a decade we have gathered experience as a sensor manufacturing start-up and as part of a globally active technology corporation. Collaboration with scientists and joint projects resemble essential elements during all stages of this business development. Although the nature of the collaborations can vary (educational project, basic research, targeted development, technology assessment, etc.), all these alliances should have in common that they are carried out with maximum efficiency. This means that the intersectoral partners should contribute according to their strengths, be clear on their individual interests to be able to prepare a win-win setting and be willing to partner on eye level. Besides generalized reflections on science-industry collaboration (e.g. motivations and benefits for the different type of actors), this contribution will highlight and present exemplary results from past and ongoing global project collaborations, i.e. initiatives from the USA and Europe. These examples might include development, assessment and application work on chemical analyzers for the determination of total alkalinity and pH, sensors for dissolved CO2, CH4 or O2, scientific echo sounders, sensor integrations on modern mobile platforms or lander-based observation and monitoring systems.

On this poster we explore how well global HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) simulations predict (semidiurnal) internal tides and their decay. We explore two important factors that govern the internal tide predictability: model resolution (8 km vs. 4 km) and wave drag. We validate these simulations with internal-tide sea-surface height amplitudes from altimetry, surface-tide dissipation rates estimated from an altimetry-constrained model, finestructure and microstructure dissipation rates, and modal-conversion rates computed from analytical models. To compare HYCOM to various altimetry data sets, we derive a spatially varying correction factor that accounts for the effect of time series duration on non-stationarity. We perform tidal energy balances and decompose the M2 internal tides into vertical modes.

Accurately measuring CO2 system variables in the ocean is necessary not only to estimate carbon fluxes, but also to understand changes in seawater chemistry and its effect on marine organisms. Total alkalinity (AT) is one of the most commonly used parameters to characterize the marine CO2 system, but compared to the other measureable CO2 system variables, the measurement of AT necessarily titrates all bases present in seawater, and not just those of interest (carbonate and bicarbonate). While the majority of non-CO2 bases in seawater are identified and easily accounted for, there is extensive evidence for unidentified bases (excess alkalinity, AX) at levels exceeding the uncertainty of the AT measurement. Failure to account for these unidentified bases in a quantitatively meaningful way will lead to errors in interpreting AT as a CO2 system variable. Few methods estimating AX are presented with uncertainty estimates, and none have so far dealt with the uncertainty in the total boron content (BT), the second largest acid-base system in the ocean following the CO2 system. I will describe an open-cell titration approach that can, together with equilibrium modelling, quantify AX as a combination of one or several acid-base systems with apparent total concentration(s) (XT) and acid dissociation constant(s) (KX). The method includes titration of a seawater sample with a strong acid to estimate AT, followed by quantitative removal of CO2. The sample is then titrated with a strong base, and data from this “back-titration” can be used to quantify AX. An uncertainty assessment is provided that includes systematic errors and effects of CO2 contamination, supplemented by colorimetric measurements of BT. This work provides realistic uncertainties of AT measurements made in areas suspected of having a high presence of unidentified acid-base systems, thus contributing to a more accurate assessment of changes in marine CO2 chemistry and speciation in many environments.

Hurricane Michael in 2018 was one of the strongest storms to impact the coastal U.S. and was unusual given that it occurred in October (i.e., late in the hurricane season) and intensified over the continental shelf. A potential contributor to this extreme event was thought to be anomalously high heat content on the shelf of the Mississippi Bight, a shelf region significantly impacted by freshwater discharge. Using available long-term time series of regional meteorological and oceanic measurements, water column conditions during the run-up to the rapid intensification of Hurricane Michael were compared to historical conditions in the region. Data for the water column heat content in the western Mississippi Bight were available at a mooring site on the 20 m isobath (Site CP) during August-October of 2018. Unusually high heat content was observed, relative to the typical summer conditions of previous years (N = 13), which resulted from the compounding effects of atmospheric events in the preceding months (August and September): a series of smaller mixing events (e.g., passage of Tropical Storm Gordon) in conjunction with a regional heatwave during most of September. Tropical Storm Gordon traveled across the shelf of the Mississippi Bight, disrupting the stratified water column as observed at Site CP. The stratification breakdown mixed the upper water column heat content deeper into the water column and subsequently allowed for the anomalously warm atmospheric conditions in September to effectively transfer heat deeper into the water column. While the mooring site was significantly distant (250 km) from the center of Hurricane Michael, these processes observed in the western Mississippi Bight likely occurred in the eastern portion of the basin as well. As a result of these compounding atmospheric effects, the shelf water column was primed to support the intensification of following tropical storms, which highlights the need for coupled oceanic-atmospheric forecast models to capture the interaction between the ocean and atmosphere and its effect on water column conditions on the shelf.

Multi-frequency acoustic backscatter measurement can be used to observe spatial profiles of suspended sediment. The use of multiple frequencies helps to resolve mean particle size by exploiting the frequency-dependent relationship between scattering intensity and particle size. The AQUAscat acoustic backscatter profiler uses this principle to estimate mean particle size and concentration profiles with spatial resolution between 2.5 mm and 40 mm. The instrument is usually configured to acquire profiles of backscatter amplitude. However, an infrequently used setting on the standard instrument provides direct access to the quadrature sampled backscatter data stream, from which amplitude is normally calculated. By using the in-phase and quadrature sample data, the backscatter phase can also be calculated. The rate of phase change between profiles can then be related to the along-beam velocity of the scatterers. For a vertical beam, in the absence of vertical water motion, this is the settling velocity. This paper evaluates datasets and data processing approaches for estimating particle settling velocity. The experimental data is acquired with various types of laboratory generated suspensions, including glass spheres, sands, and flocculating mud. Besides extracting settling velocity data, the processing aim is to enhance the quality of acoustic backscatter data analysis.

A statistical-equilibrium, geostrophic-turbulence regime of the stochastically forced, one-layer, reduced-gravity, quasi-geostrophic model is identified in which the numerical solutions are representative of global mean, mid-latitude, open-ocean mesoscale variability. A nominal best fit to observed SSH variance, autocorrelation, eddy, and spectral statistics is obtained for dimensional SSH stochastic-forcing variance production rate 1/4 cm^2/d, an SSH damping rate 1/62 1/wk, and a stochastic forcing autocorrelation timescale near or greater than 1 wk. This ocean mesoscale regime is nonlinear and appears to fall near the stochastic limit, at which wave-mean interaction is just strong enough to begin to reduce the local mesoscale variance production, but is still weak relative to the overall nonlinearity. Comparison of linearly-inverted wavenumber-frequency spectra shows that a strong effect of nonlinearity, the removal of energy from the resonant linear wave field, is resolved by the gridded altimeter SSH data. These inversions further suggest a possible signature in the merged altimeter SSH dataset of signal propagation characteristics from the objective analysis procedure.