Hello from sunny Santa Barbara, California, where the ship operations for the PACE-PAX campaign are underway!
The PACE satellite went into orbit in February 2024. Its mission is to help us better understand how the ocean and atmosphere exchange carbon dioxide, as well as how aerosols can fuel phytoplankton blooms and help us track harmful algal blooms around the planet.
PACE-PAX stands for Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem – Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment (see why we made it shorter?) We are using two airplanes and three ships, among other free-sailing instruments, to gather data that will tell us how well our shiny new satellite, PACE, is doing. We compare our planet-side data with the space-side data so we can make sure we are providing the very best information about the health of the world’s oceans.
