S-MODE

Being a biological oceanographer on a physical oceanographic voyage has highlighted a key distinction between the two disciplines. Physical oceanographers rely on sensing – deploying instrumentation that measures properties of the water: temperature, velocity, oxygen, etc. Those data are sent back to laptops allowing for near instantaneous analysis. The day-to-day work of biological oceanography, on the other hand, may be a science best described by filtering – a task that is intertwined with most measurements in our field.

NASA has been tracking the impacts of climate in a place you might not expect the agency to do research. The work is being done in and over the ocean.

"When you think NASA you think space, but we do look at the Earth a lot," said Erin Czech, project manager for NASA's S-MODE or Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment, "We have a lot of missions, across the globe, trying to understand our Earth better, S-MODE is one of them."

NASA scientists are flying off the California coast to see how the weather of the ocean interacts with the Earth’s climate and the journey started at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View. Vianey Arana reports.

​Scientists at NASA are on a mission to study the surface of the Earth's oceans to observe how eddies, whirlpools and currents interact with the atmosphere and shape the Earth’s climate. NBC’s Jacob Soboroff reports for TODAY.

NASA has taken to the seas and skies to study the unique environment at the ocean’s surface, where marine ecosystems intersect with our planet's complex atmosphere. On April 7, 2023, scientists participating in the Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment (S-MODE) embarked on the RV Sally Ride from San Diego on the last of three field expeditions to understand the ocean’s role in the Earth’s changing climate. They will be at sea for about a month until returning to San Diego on May 4, and they will operate for most of that period in tandem with an accompanying airborne campaign.