Day 3 of AEROSE-V

It’s a Monday today. I have to keep reminding myself of the days of the week because the days quite rapidly become anonymous without the normal frames of reference that we take for granted. The ship is cruising at a steady speed (about 11 knots) and about 300 nautical miles off the northeastern coastline of South America. No land is in sight but there are lots of clouds and convective systems. We will be losing an hour today as we cross another time zone to the east. The motion of the ship extends the daylight hours quite a bit. We briefly passed under our first rain band this afternoon but it only lasted a few moments. The haze is fading away as we travel further south. The satellite imagery and model forecasts predict that we will just cut across a narrow slice of the plume before we enter a more convective region (the ITCZ) and then into the doldrums. The doldrums are one of my favorite parts of the ocean – truly the marine desert. The sea looks like glass, placid, smooth-surfaced, and barely rippling as the ship cuts through the fluid mass. The sunsets and sunrises (on the rare occasions that I stay up for them) are simply amazing …but we’re not there yet.

Today, the students were frantic in their efforts to bring the instruments up to speed. I think that we have safely put the sea-sickness behind us. We have eight students aboard this cruise and two “teachers” – one a young female professor from Lincoln University and the other a high school teacher from Westchester, New York. The latter is participating in a special program called the NOAA Teacher at Sea. The other, is an assistant professor at a historically black college in Pennsylvania. The college professor and seven students have been assigned to specific tasks associated with a particular set of instrumentation to measure gaseous pollutants, aerosols, atmospheric radiation, or meteorological parameters. As I stated earlier, many of the students have never been at sea before. Likewise, most of the students have little, if any, experience with the scientific equipment to which they were assigned. This makes for a terrific challenge on both their part and mine (including my colleagues). We must train them to operate, educate them to understand, and show them how to navigate the challenges of field research in a “learn-as-you-go” environment. This is an atypical approach but one that we think is fruitful. The lead scientists see this as an opportunity to teach students “how to think” more than “what to think”.

Since today was a critical day with regards to capturing a snapshot of the aged dust from the existing Saharan storm. I applied some pressure to the aerosols subgroup to initiate sampling for fungi, and size-segregated microbiological and chemical composition. I am pleased to say that they were able to get the samplers up and operational for today. I expect that a second wave of instrumentation will be deployed tomorrow. Unfortunately, we still do not have full power in the equipment van, so this limits what we can do with many of the instruments. The winds have increased and it is difficult to steady ourselves atop the van to install sampling equipment. This has delayed us slightly but we are still quite optimistic about our chances to acquire some high quality data.

A couple of the students were challenged by “temperamental and/or ancient” laptops running dinosaur-ware and interfacing instruments to PCs. However, I am pleased to report that they all overcame their struggles by the end of the day. We held our first all-hands meeting to discuss ship protocols and expectations, to explain task scheduling, and to set the regular group meeting times (8pm each day). At these meetings, we have a weather briefing, listen to updates from each subgroup, plan for the next day, and listen to one of our colleagues’ brief presentation on their most recent data. I will probably give the first seminar on Wednesday and schedule the other folks subsequently.

I have had a productive day today. I completed reviewing two manuscripts arising from a collaboration with a colleague in Sudan, I completed my responses to reviewers’ comments on a manuscript that I recently submitted for publication, and I created a Facebook page for the scientific mission last night/this morning (AEROSE). We have already begun to field questions from an elementary school. I am planning to announce its availability to a few more summer programs or schools that might be interested in following us over the next 28 days. I hope to add some photos later tonight. I think that much of this is a direct result of internet rationing.

Well, we have group meeting in about 30 minutes. I need to get prepared, so I’ll break here. I will end the night with a workout in the “house of pain” – our nickname for the modest exercise space on the ship. I usually hit the gym for an hour before my late-night movie break. I also have to wash a load of clothes. Perhaps, I will be able to get that in before the meeting…