NAAMES

NASA’s North Atlantic Aerosols and Marine Ecosystems Study (NAAMES) returned to air and sea to research the declining, or deaccelerating, phase of the annual cycle of plankton in the North Atlantic. Since plankton form the base of the marine food web and impact the productivity of fisheries, understanding this declining phase is important to forecasting the future.

NAAMES, or the North Atlantic Aerosols and Marine Ecosystems Study, is a five-year NASA-funded study that aims to better define the relationship between the ocean and the atmosphere. NAAMES is the first NASA Earth Venture-Suborbital mission focused on studying the coupled ocean ecosystem and atmosphere using ships and aircraft simultaneously.

The C-130 departed St. John’s for the fifth, 10-hr. NAAMES science flight targeting the clouds around the ship to the south at Point S6 as well as drifters deployed during previous stations at Points S1, S2, and S3. Vertical winds calibration maneuvers were carried out on both the outbound and inbound transit legs at 21,000 and 20,000 ft., respectively.

The fourth NAAMES science flight complements yesterday’s southern survey by heading north to finally capture ocean remote sensing around Points S1 and S3 before heading south again to execute bowtie and cloud module maneuvers in the vicinity of the ship at Point S4. The ECMWF cloud forecast suggested that the entire northern end of the track would have relatively low cloud fraction today, which actually ended up being scattered-to-broken clouds throughout much of the region.