The NOC is part of a team of marine scientists from countries bordering the north and south Atlantic Ocean, assessing the health of deep sea ecosystems. They will determine the resilience of both the animals that live there and their habitats, to threats such as temperature rise, pollution and human activities.
Scientists and technicians from the National Oceanography Centre are spending six weeks at sea gathering data from the deep ocean that provide important information about our varying climate.
This year they will for the first time be retrieving data on the transport of carbon dioxide by the ocean.
Scientists from NOC have led a study to infer variability of the sub-polar Atlantic Ocean Meridional Overturning Circulation using estimates of air-sea exchanges of heat and water at the ocean’s surface.
The National Oceanography Centre will lead the UK component of two projects to monitor the crucial ocean currents in the North Atlantic which shape Britain’s climate.
Science Minister David Willetts announced the projects this week when he delivered the Mountbatten Memorial Lecture at the Royal Institution.
The most detailed photographic survey of the abyssal ocean floor has been taken by the National Oceanography Centre’s robot sub, Autosub6000 – some half a million photos that will be stitched together to form a ‘street view’ map of the North Atlantic’s Porcupine Abyssal Plain and its inhabitants.
NOC scientist, Dr Henry Ruhl, is leading an expedition to the Porcupine Abyssal Plain, some 300 miles southwest of Lands End. He will be looking at how the shape of deep ocean floor and climate influence deep sea ecology, and he intends to do this by making a very large photographic map of the seafloor – 10km by 10km – an area roughly the size of Southampton.
Scientists from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton will be joining a North Atlantic deep-sea drilling expedition that aims to uncover the secrets of the world’s climate system during the last period of ‘extreme warmth’, which occurred over 30 million years ago.
In 2013 Ben Fogle will attempt to swim more than 3,000 miles from America to Cornwall. Supported by a yacht, Ben will need to swim more than 30 miles a day to reach his target of completing the crossing in under 100 days.
