Floating Computers Keep an Eye on the Oceans

mightysquirrel81 writes "This fascinating picture story shows the tech behind the global Argo progamme set up to monitor the world's oceans. Using 3,000 floating computers and a network of satellites, researchers measure sea temperature and ocean currents to predict climate change."

Comments

Can they *affect* the climate?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars , the terraformer Sax Russell releases little wind-powered heaters all over the surface of the Red Planet in order to raise the temperature. Over the course of the novel, they end up heating the planet by about 1 degree Celcius. Would such a similar trick work on our planet, could global warming or cooling be tamed by the action of thousands of dispersed devices?

Re:Can they *affect* the climate?

[ozmanjusri]

Would such a similar trick work on our planet

No, and it wouldn't have worked on Mars either.

The wind energy is already being conserved and eventually becomes heart.

Re:Can they *affect* the climate?

[sheriff_cahill]

Even better, we could drop a massive block of ice in the ocean on a regular basis!

Re:Can they *affect* the climate?

[Squalish]

The reason that they worked was that the underground green movement (against the wishes of the red movement, which wanted the planet to be studied sterile) had clandestinely seeded each one with a cocktail of extremophile lichens, algaes, and photosynthesizers. They darkened the surface of the planet and began the chemical transformation that its atmosphere would need (particularly once they started burning the regolith), as well as fixing soil at the surface. They were preserved in little colonies situated on the heaters, the better to keep them alive and acclimate them slowly to their new environment. More importantly than any of these primary effects, they poisoned the environment with life and justified further human ecoscaping (no more virgin Mars as a cassus belli).

The idea was pitched publicly as a very minor + experimental, but doable means of heating up the climate and reducing the existing winds, which could be severe, and which kicked up enough dust to reduce insolation at times.

Re:Can they *affect* the climate?

[TheLink]

"They poisoned the environment with life and justified further human ecoscaping"

Terrarism by the evil eco-terrarists!

Re:Can they *affect* the climate?

[tambo]

Would such a similar trick work on our planet, could global warming or cooling be tamed by the action of thousands of dispersed devices?

They sure did in the Evan Chan game back in 2001. ;)

(Synopsis: In this online game - an Alternate Reality Game that served as a marketing campaign for the movie A.I. - the scientists of the year 2142 created a network of thermoplankton capable of changing color from black to white, and that could be controlled by a satellite network. Despite the small size, these thermoplankton were deployed en masse, and the scientists could use their coloring to alter the visual albedo of the Earth enough to control the climate. Unfortunately, the thermoplankton network evolved into a collective intelligence that had conflicting ideas - or, at least, *different* ideas - and when it stopped responding to scientists' instructions, its color changes proved sufficiently chaotic to plunge the world into an ice age, killing humanity.)

(Yes, this was a free marketing campaign, and this story arc was one of many comprising a much larger, deeply fascinating story. Ahh, the memories... =) )

- David Stein / sfsdfd / Cloudmaker

Re:Can they *affect* the climate?

[BlackPignouf]

Sure!

Those dispersed devices are called "humans". And those actions are sometimes described as "stop taking planes", "don't buy this SUV", "put a jumper instead of heating your house to summer temperatures during winter", "don't eat too much meat", "move your ass and stop waiting for a technological miracle" or "understand that American/European way of life actually is negotiable".

Anyway, you cannot produce "cool", except if you find a way to release excess heat outside of the atmosphere (e.g.: an open fridge actually heats our planet, but putting the condenser on the moon would cool it down). Global dimming has already been proposed as a "solution" to global warming : spreading so many small particles in the atmosphere that a part of solar radiation would be directly reflected. But this simply cannot work because particles end up falling down after a while (hours/days/months, whatever) while global warming will have long-term effects (centuries at least). To actually counterpart global warming effect, you would have to keep increasing local pollution.

Coming back to your example, you obviously can use wind's work to increase internal energy of the atmosphere, but I doubt it would have any significant influence compared to the 10**17W that earth receives from the sun. It's much more "efficient" to keep on releasing CO2/CH4/N2O/SF6 into the atmosphere to increase greenhouse effect.

Botnet?

[dvs01]

I wonder if those run linux. If not, how long before they become a botnet?

Re:Botnet?

[__aaclcg7560]

I'm sure they have excellent floating point precision to become a botnet. :P

Re:Botnet?

[Plutonite]

WTH?

Re:Botnet?

[weighn]

I'm sure they have excellent floating point precision to become a botnet. :P yes, but are they water-cooled?

Re:Botnet?

[Anonymous Coward]

wouldn't it be a boatnet?

Re:Botnet?

[Raideen]

I wonder if those run linux. If not, how long before they become a botnet?

Botnet by land, fish net by sea.

Re:Botnet?

[zcat_NZ]

buoynet, perhaps?

Re:Botnet?

[kitsunewarlock]

But would a beowulf cluster of these ocean-viewing overlords blend?

Re:Botnet?

[avronius]

fanbouy...

better idea

[ILuvRamen]

So why not look for Nessy aka the Loch Ness Monster with them as a test? Now THAT would be scientifically productive to me at least :D

Re:better idea

[TheSHAD0W]

Yeah... But it'll want about three-fitty.

Re:better idea

[c6gunner]

Probably the same reason we haven't used the mars rover to look for little green men. Namely, we knew even before we launched the rover that there was no way in hell they could possibly exist.

Miscalibrated

[MightyMait]

Were these the same floats that initially indicated that the oceans were *cooling* and not warming, but which were later recalibrated to report "accurate" temperature data?

Re:Miscalibrated

[Ambitwistor]

Were these the same floats that initially indicated that the oceans were *cooling* and not warming, but which were later recalibrated to report "accurate" temperature data? Yes.

Re:Miscalibrated

[RuBLed]

The link is for registered users only. Here is a google search that will lead you to the pdf file. Google result

Re:Miscalibrated

[letxa2000]

Were these the same floats that initially indicated that the oceans were *cooling* and not warming, but which were later recalibrated to report "accurate" temperature data?

Hey, as long as keep accepting "heating" readings and keep rejecting or massaging "cooling" readings, we can keep up the global warming scam for at least another 5-10 years!

Re:Miscalibrated

[sumdumass]

And this is why I love slashdot too. Here we have an AC who is either too chicken to take mod points for something he believes in enough to make a comment about or simple Trolling for the excitement of it.

I really don't know what was going through his mind but I especially like the refrence to how his way is the better way. I mean the comment of Even if it is a scam it is high time that the people of this planet start being better stewards of the ONLY place we have to live. Too bad we have to choke on our own waste in the name of economic success. really amused me. Who is to say that there is a better way. Does all the negatives it creates in other areas outweigh it in the current area? But then again, if it is a scam, then is it even a problem? So if there isn't a problem, how can you do it better? Or it is just something you perceive as better because of all the brainwashing from the scam?

And please note, I'm not claiming it is a scam at all. I'm concentrating on the idea that it could be either and the Parents idea of believing the intent of the scam and dismissing the scam itself. Wouldn't the entire idea of better become suspect if it is a scam?

Global warming is most likely a scam as it is being presented through the GEO-political arena. But most things pushed through there are scams too. If there really was a problem, we would be a lot further down the path of fixing it if they didn't attempt to forgive the third world debt by placing payment systems in place to benefit them.

Re:Miscalibrated

[Anonymous Coward]

So then in your mind the nations that industrialized in the 1800s (Basically Europe) should be the only ones to be allowed the use of polluting technology, because they did it first before anything was scientifically proven about the detrimental effects? That imposes extra barriers to modernization to nations now industrializing, and to get cooperation without making an informal and never accepteed form of ruling nations that must be counted in the process of divying up the environmental preservation duties to the nations of the world. Even though the European powers and their spawn are industrial and continue pollution themselves, it is somehow solely the fault of the heathens that anything is going wrong with the climate? Wake the fuck up.

Re:Miscalibrated

[timmarhy]

dude you got motherfucking owned, crawl away now before the GP gives you a 2nd hiding.

Re:Miscalibrated

[HexaByte]

More importantly, how are they going to use this data to predict climate change without a long term dataset to compare it to? A few days ago, it was getting warmer each day, leading me to "believe" that summer was coming. Now it's suddenly gotten quite cold here, and I have to conclude that the next Ice Age is upon us.

Of course, comparing it to the long term dataset in my memory, I now realize that we just had a bit of "Indian Summer" during our normal Autumn, and that Winter is soon to rear it's cold, gray head.

The point being, too often today researchers (most of whom get paid by grants, and get more grants when they have to study more because the preliminary data suggest a catastrophe in the making) are too quick to analyze data that has been collected in a very short period, skewing the results.

Re:Miscalibrated

[sumdumass]

So then in your mind the nations that industrialized in the 1800s (Basically Europe) should be the only ones to be allowed the use of polluting technology, because they did it first before anything was scientifically proven about the detrimental effects?

Well, I said nothing of the sorts. Maybe you should wake up.

But seeing how you imagined that I did, I will respond to a little of what you said. I encourage you to open your eyes and listen or read what I am going to reply because I don't want you to imagine something that simply isn't there. BTW, there are medical terms for people with conditions like yours, I forget it but it goes to the same effect of most of what you know to be true turns out to be imagined by you.

That imposes extra barriers to modernization to nations now industrializing, and to get cooperation without making an informal and never accepteed form of ruling nations that must be counted in the process of divying up the environmental preservation duties to the nations of the world. Even though the European powers and their spawn are industrial and continue pollution themselves, it is somehow solely the fault of the heathens that anything is going wrong with the climate? Wake the fuck up.

Well, this all depends on who you are considering a heathen. I'm suspecting it is the third world countries, but considering the rhetoric of your imagination, it could mean Americans or whatever.

You are assuming that third world countries have to obey the same rules that the industrialized west does. This is just not true. Look at china and india. They are prime examples of it.

You seem to be under the incorrect assumption that the political solutions like Kyoto was actually forcing a reduction in anything meaningful that is associated with the problem. It wasn't, it isn't and it was/is attempting to force a relocation of industry or a payment to those third world countries under the auspice of "we're all going to die".

Your also attempting to assume that environmental protection issues is what is creating the barrier to entry for these third world countries. And you know what they say about when you ASS-U-ME (besides that your often wrong)

SO lets address this stuff. First, We cannot and do not force laws onto sovereign countries. We can negotiate trade treaties and require certain protections to the environment and so on but there is nothing beside their desire to trade with the Industrialized western states inflicting this. There is nothing stopping them from forgoing the environmental lessons that we have already learned and paid for and then tackling it later when they can afford it more. There is nothing stopping them from ignoring anything and still trading either. Look at china and India. They are my favorite countries to pick on because they did exactly this. They ignored pollution and environmental concerns and went from a backwards up approach but they aren't to the same levels of concern over the environment that we are. Did you know that their pollution levels skyrocketed when the West decided to relocate industry there because not only can they take advantage of slave labor wages, it archives the goals set out in the political fixes for global warming and makes an arbitrary reduction seem more feasible when you have exponential growth of your population and the industry needed to support it. But the catch is that the reduction was only in a certain area or the world that ignores the increases in others.

The real reason these countries have a barrier to industrialization is because of their internal workings and structure. They have typically had dictators or kings of sorts that pocketed all the wealth of the nation and provided little in the means of support for critical infrastructure, education, safe drinking water or resource management (all of which I would group under critical infrastructure). You know, you cannot have factories without roads, you cannot ha

Re:Miscalibrated

[MillionthMonkey]

Global warming is most likely a scam as it is being presented through the GEO-political arena. But most things pushed through there are scams too. If there really was a problem, we would be a lot further down the path of fixing it if they didn't attempt to forgive the third world debt by placing payment systems in place to benefit them.

OK, genius, how does debt forgiveness keep us from fixing global warming?

Re:Miscalibrated

[letxa2000]

OK, genius, how does debt forgiveness keep us from fixing global warming?

It doesn't keep us from "fixing global warming," but it simply doesn't help. That's the whole point. Kyoto obviously wasn't about the environment. It was about giving the developing countries advantages they wouldn't otherwise have.

Re:Miscalibrated

[sumdumass]

Why don't you tell us how it fixes it.

I mean besides making the entire situation look like a redistribution of wealth scam that hasn't decrease Co2 emissions on a global scale yet and won't anytime in the near future, it creates resistance to both the idea of global warming and the purpose solutions based on the fraud value alone. Over half of the countries that signed do not have to lower their emissions. They actually count as a reduction when the UK moves some polluting industries to that third world country, SO according to the scheme, the UK had reduces carbon output but often the relocated plant produces more carbon the in the original location. This output is not only in shipping resources and final products across greater distances but the plant itself is often spewing more carbon because it isn't subjected to the carbon caps and it is cheaper to build a factory without a bunch of pollution control equipment.

Then there is the idea that I could pay some unrelated country that has poorly managed their infrastructure, population and so on to take the blame for my carbon emissions. There is a reason that 137 some odd countries signed up for Kyoto and only 39 or 40 of them are subject to limiting their emissions. And there are at least 2 of those that are allowed to increase their emissions to boot. SO think about this, what does it solve? I though the idea behind global warming was that we produced too much carbon based greenhouse gases, not that we were producing them in the wrong places.

But it gets worse, Germany, You got to applaud Germany for their efforts, They have been able to keep their population growth to the lowest numbers in Europe despite being the second most populated European country outside Russia. In recent years it has been a negetive growth. They manages to limit their Carbon emission's and actually reduce them by something like 17%. well that may only be fore Co2 and not all the covered carbon based greenhouse gases. But anyways, it is impressive.

But impressive to what cost? Germany has an unemployment rate almost twice the size of America and more then twice the size of other European countries like the U.K. It might be higher but in 2006, they exempted their coal industry from the credit accounting. Then when you look at just just Co2 emissions from 1980 and up, you see that their biggest reductions actually are accounted for by irregularities when they combines east and west Germany in 1991.

In 1990, the baseline for kyoto, the combined total for east and west Germany was around 980.01 million metric tons of Co2. This is about 5mmt lower then the previous combined year. In 1991, when they official counted the two as one for measurement purposes, the numbers were 923.57mmt, a reduction of 56.44mmt. In 1992, the official number was 883.82mmt, another stout reduction of almost 40 million metric tons. And now, for the punch line that you have been waiting for, between 1992 and 2004, where my numbers end and that 17% number come up, they have only been able to reduce emissions to 862.23. That is a reduction of 21.59 million metric tons over a 12 year period. And oddly enough, it is the same Co2 production levels that were present in 1998 when the Kyoto protocol was being created. It also coincides with the when Germany signed the Kyoto as a type 1 and type 2 country. They can trade carbon credits with themselves as well as sell to other countries in order to meet their targets.

So here is a country toughed as a leader in reducing GHG emissions that has basically done it all with smoke and mirrors before the Kyotyo protocol had been developed, had benefited from low population growth and has achieved nothing since the inception of the Kyoto scam except a high unemployment rate.

So tell me, how does it fix global warming?

OR better yet, tell me how, when the Human industrial contributed GHGs are supposed to be the problem, does continuing to pile more and more Co2 on top of what is already there each and every year fixing anything when the

If they keep drifting around

[RuBLed]

Wouldn't that mean they would wash up on shore sooner or later much like what happened to the rubber duckies spill incident? If so they would end up constantly replacing those things but they seem to be cheap to make though.

Re:If they keep drifting around

[Ambitwistor]

Yes, they do wash up on shore (sometimes they're even found), and yes, they are continually replaced.

Re:If they keep drifting around

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what they consist of. Maybe a tranceiver of some kind on a special frequency? If they do wash up on shore; its' going to get really fun watching the sensors move around on land. I can just imagine the neighborhood kids getting ahold of one and riding around with it, take it school for show and tell, and eventually throwing it out in the trash ending up in the local a California landfill built on a watershed, LOL! Perhaps I might find one and pack it in my car on one of my cross country treks from CA to N.Y.? They look on those scientists faces......priceless, hahahaha!

Re:If they keep drifting around

[letxa2000]

If so they would end up constantly replacing those things but they seem to be cheap to make though.

From the article: "Each float weights 25kg and is 2 metres in height (including its aerial) and costs around £15,000 to operate over its lifetime." $30,000 doesn't seem too cheap for something that goes around washing up on the shore.

Re:If they keep drifting around

[Freedryk]

They drift at depths of 1-2km most of the time, and down there the ocean mostly moves along topography lines so the floats actually tend to float parallel to coasts. Some of them wash ashore, but much less than would occur if they were at the surface all the time.

Re:If they keep drifting around

[publicworker]

Very true (I'd mod you up if I had points). More precisely an Argo float generally drifts at 2000m (2000db pressure actually) and then ascends every 10 days to take salinity and temperature profiles and send the data to a satellite. An Argo float lasts about 4 or 5 years after which I suppose the battery is drained and the float may sink or wash ashore.

It's not a cheap undertaking, but the data is absolutely invaluable to oceanographers since it's damn near impossible to sample such a huge body using only ships!

Usefull link: http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/FrHow_Argo_floats.html

Re:If they keep drifting around

[presarioD]

I wonder if they have a collection or recycling mechanism for the dead/mulfunctioning/washed-up ones, otherwise I can't help point out the irony that in the process of studying the environment (in order to be friendlier to it) you pollute the hell out of it. Are the gadgets biodegradable? Do they self-destruct into harmless, eco-friendly elements with a nice boom? (will make ordinary swimming experience fun beyond imagination...)... 800 Argo floats/year without collecting the old ones is at least irresponsible...

Re:If they keep drifting around

[ColdWetDog]

I wonder if they have a collection or recycling mechanism for the dead/mulfunctioning/washed-up ones, otherwise I can't help point out the irony that in the process of studying the environment (in order to be friendlier to it) you pollute the hell out of it.

While in principal, I'd agree that research devices shouldn't pollute, your phrasing is a bit hyperbolic. Do you realize the magnitude of the junk we toss into ocean? The Argo bots are insignificant. Don't get your knickers all in a twist about little crap like that. Worry about the big stuff. That said, I'd sure like to find one tossed up on the shore. Much more useful than the usual stuff we find.

A short history of the OSU Buoy Group

[Frosty Piss]

My father has been dropping computers into the ocean for 30 years. Learn more here: http://cmrecords.net/osu/history.htm

Re:A short history of the OSU Buoy Group

[Anonymous Coward]

How about better feedback than that? WHAT'S wrong with it? Reads fine to me...

Re:A short history of the OSU Buoy Group

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with the other AC. It would be much easier to read (and I would bother reading it) if the text was black on a white background, and was set into columns rather that filling the whole page width.

Re:A short history of the OSU Buoy Group

[Frosty Piss]

A short history of the OSU Buoy Group

The Buoy Group operated at Oregon State University for more than 35 years. It was active in the development and use of deep-sea mooring techniques and instruments, particularly current meters and meteorological instruments. The Buoy Group was a major participant in the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) and operated the WOCE Current Meter Data Assembly Center.

In the early 1960s the recently formed OSU Department of Oceanography began to make observations off the Oregon coast. June Patullo, one of the Department's founding members, recognized that mooring work should be a part of the data collection effort. Dale Pillsbury, who later led the Buoy Group, was hired at this time by Wayne Burt. Together with Bob Still and Dennis Barstow, who already were making hydrographic observations, he became involved in the initial mooring effort.

The earliest data in the present archive were obtained with Braincon current meters and thermographs beginning in 1965. The Braincon instruments recorded on photographic film and produced time series one or two months in length, with a sampling interval as short as 5 minutes. Reading the film was difficult and time-consuming. Each frame of a current meter film showed a dot of light whose position encoded a speed and direction. These early experiments were conducted under the supervision of June Patullo and took place in shallow water over the Oregon continental shelf.

The Buoy Group began to deploy Aanderaa current meters in 1972. These instruments were first used in the Coastal Upwelling Experiment (CUE-1). This was the Buoy Group's first large-scale experiment and was conducted jointly with scientists from PMEL and the University of Washington. By this time the Group was being managed by Dr. Robert L. Smith, who was also a PI of CUE-1. CUE-1 was the first of a series of experiments off the US west coast, Peru and West Africa to examine coastal dynamics, particularly upwelling, in relation to biological production.

The Buoy Group's first Aanderaas (the RCM4 and RCM5) employed a mechanical encoder and recorded 10-bit numbers on magnetic tape. Speed was measured with a type of Savonius rotor. In terms of accuracy and ease of use, these current meters represented a major advance over the Braincon instruments. A significant drawback, however, was the mismatch between speed and direction. Speed was recorded as an average over the sampling interval, whereas direction was measured instantaneously at the end of the interval. A second problem was the mechanical encoder, which employed a rotating arrangement of pins and wedges to transform voltages into 10-bit binary numbers. Although the mechanism was ingenious, there was a tendency for the pins to stick, injecting spurious powers of 2 into the result.

The original Aanderaas eventually were upgraded to solid state electronics. This happened in the late 1980's. The modified instruments retained the Savonius-style rotor and large vane of the earlier design, although by this time Aanderaa had introduced a paddlewheel rotor and a smaller vane. These current meters, which were designated RCM7 and RCM8, recorded in CMOS RAM and employed a vector-averaging scheme. They were inherently reliable and corrected most of the failings of the RCM4 and RCM5. The RCM7 and RCM8 remained mainstays of Buoy Group operations until the Group disbanded.

Our initial experience with vector-averaging current meters, however, involved the InterOcean S4. We began experimenting with S4's in the mid-1980's. The S4 was spherical and contained no moving parts. It measured current components by assessing voltages generated as water passed through high-frequency magnetic fields created by a coil at the instrument's equator. S4's were employed in only a few Buoy Group experiments. The instrument was unstable and difficult to calibrate. Because the constant term in its speed calibration tended to drift it was not reliable in low-velocity environments.

Dale Pill

Re:A short history of the OSU Buoy Group

[birdwithoneleg]

I was part of a team that designed instrumentation that does the same thing: http://www-ccs.ucsd.edu/research/sbcsmb/drifters/

Re:A short history of the OSU Buoy Group

[Trogre]

Me too. But please don't tell those recycling guys.

sensors that are unmaintained

[timmarhy]

How do they calibrate and test the accuracy of these sensors?

Re:sensors that are unmaintained

[Anonymous Coward]

The trick is to calibrate and test the sensors at the factory.

Re:sensors that are unmaintained

[timmarhy]

yeah right because they made from magical electronics which never suffers any kind of frequency drift and are impervious to pyshical damage.

Re:sensors that are unmaintained

[Freedryk]

I'm not totally sure how they do the calibration, I don't actually work with Argo, but I used to work in the same department as one of the main groups manufacturing floats. This is what I remember from papers I've read and stuff I picked up at seminars, so I may have the details wrong. Before they are launched, the sensors are calibrated using a sample of IAPSO Standard Seawater. Once they are out at sea, sensor drift is estimated a few ways.

First, if another Argo float moves through the same body of water as a previous one, the measurements they make are compared. Each year you get a few hundred matchup like this and that lets you get an indication of the drift.

Second, there are ship measurements that are taken periodically as research vessels cross the ocean. These measurements can be calibrated very exactly, and they sometimes cross float tracks, so you can compare the ship data with occasional float data. They can also send ships out specifically to compare with certain floats, cause the floats transmit their position home every few days.

Third, they've fished some of the floats out of the water and recalibrated them. The ones they've recalibrated this way are used as a sample to calculate drift rates.

Fourth, the reconstructions of ocean state that they do are based on interpolation and long averages, and if the drift is random, the average of a bunch of the floats should be close to reality. If a float is obviously drifting too far from reality (as measured by other floats or the climatology for the area) the data is flagged and removed from the main dataset.

They tried to make the floats accurate to within about .1 PSU over their lifetime (Ocean Salinity is generally between 32-36 PSU, depending on where you are) and I think their measured accuracies from the floats they retrieved and recalibrated are within about .2 PSU. So essentially, it's really hard to calibrate these things and they try every method they can think of to do so. 0.2 PSU error may not seem that great, but before the array went in the best guesses we had were probably more like within .5 PSU or so, and we didn't have any information about how it varied with time. There was not a lot of Salinity data from the deep ocean before Argo.

Similar methods are used to calibrate the temperature and oxygen sensors, but you get the idea.

Re:sensors that are unmaintained

[mh1997]

How do they calibrate and test the accuracy of these sensors?

Accuracy is not required in global warming studies because global warming has been solved, the new problem is called climate change. I am not sure if sensor accuracy is important in climate change studies.

picture story

[Anonymous Coward]

To the webmaster: html can support more than one img tag per page!

Re:picture story

[Anonymous Coward]

What img tag? I didn't see one...

Re:picture story

[Anonymous Coward]

To the webmaster: html can support more than one img tag per page!

Yeah, but the desire of the webmaster to increase the advertising impressions doesn't.

Re:picture story

[yoshi3]

forums don't get any dumber than slashdot...

Still more on prediction, no more on action

[mr_than]

It's all well and good predicting the outcomes. In general the consensus says it's not going to be pretty yet we still have no real action on preventing any of this.

Re:Still more on prediction, no more on action

[timmarhy]

preventing what so far appears to be the natural cycle of the planet?

the jury is still out on man made climate change, inspite of what some would force down our throats.

Re:Still more on prediction, no more on action

[projektdotnet]

Agreed. How long have we kept accurate historical documentation on world climate? What is to say in 2000 years it won't be back to the return of the ice age?

Re:Still more on prediction, no more on action

[Anonymous Coward]

Even Bush has admitted that global warming is in part caused by man made CO2. Get you head out of the sand!

I've wanted to do this...

[Anonymous Coward]

...ever since reading an article in the Amateur Science section of Scientific American on a project like this. They called them "drifters", and if I'm not mistaken they were soliciting ideas on how to make them cheaply. I used to have a bunch of links for them, but I can't find them now.

Take a dead-simple computer and have it wake up twice a day...save battery power. Take measurements and send them via packet radio. Drop it off Vancouver Island and watch it go.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

First we had floating point

[Anonymous Coward]

Now we have entire floating computers to run them.

Next you're gonna tell me these computers are on a planet floating through space.

Missing The Story....

[Frosty Piss]

Well, OK.

But if you get all wrapped up in how 1998ish and "amature" the Web design is, you miss what the actual text says.

For those who are into HARDWARE, it's quite a fascinating tale of the evolution of deep sea moorings from instruments that recorded on photographic film to the high-tech devices we have today.

There are a lot of interesting stories about these things that I've heard from my dad, including how the Russians used to steal them for the technology...

Donation

[nitro316]

Can I donate a couple of computers to this project? I don't want to have waste time to remove Vista so throwing them in the ocean seems like a good enough idea for me. Don't care much if they float though

Re:MS VS team Blames Google for QA Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

vs wipes the floor with anything available on linux

Argo data

[Freedryk]

Here's a link to an online tool that lets you plot data from the Argo arrays. Got it from Wikipedia.

http://dapper.pmel.noaa.gov/dchart/

Do we really need this data?

[Thanshin]

Sea temperature can be measures by satellite and, unless you're expecting "The day after tomorrow", thermohaline circulation is quite constant. (And if it changes, it's a bit late to do anything about it).

So, are they getting from the buoys something more than a known temperature and a constant value?

It seems similar to putting ground vibration sensors to know if a meteorite hit us.

Re:Do we really need this data?

[itwerx]

Sea temperature can be measures by satellite...

But you only get a 2D image from satellite. Depth measurements like these give you more of a 3D image.
      Like the difference between seeing a sketch of a new building from a single perspective vs an architect's model that you can peer into and around from any angle.

Oblig joke

[mariuszbi]

Why did the integer drown ? Because it couldn't float!

Budding Oceanographer?

[Catharsis]

I've worked with Argo data on several occasions and I've developed some Matlab code which makes the whole process quite a bit easier. It handles caching/retrieving/querying data from the official database and also a whole bevy of visualization options. It's scripter-only stuff and hasn't been touched in a year or two but was working very well for my needs recently. Query options include date/map polygon/float number/other metadata, and visualization covers a whole range of oceanographic plots from isosurfaces and sections, to property/property plots, waterfall plots, even some protoypical 3d-surface visualization plots... you name it, I've probably done it twice.

Of course, it's all freely available to anyone who might be interested. I only ask that if you make improvements, you share them back so that they can become part of the main distribution.

The Argo dataset is really, really cool and easy to get into! Too bad the resolution is so low and the salinity sensors tend to get fouled over time.

The day after tomorrow:

[dominious]

S: What are the odds of two buoys failing?
T: Remote.
[another buoy seen on the computer screen fails]
S: Make that three.

Dupe!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Slashdot Posters,

When you learn something for the first time, that does not mean it is new to everyone else as well. There's no need to run around advertising some trivial fact you've just picked up as if it is some astounding revelation or scoop.

This story was was covered THREE YEARS ago!

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/04/1848228&tid=216

All float jokes aside

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't most of us use "double" these days?

More garbage at sea :(

[gnuman99]

From TFA: "To maintain this level, around 800 Argo floats need to be deployed per year"

So, the boxes die and are these removed from the ocean? Or just left there? But I guess one straw can't break camel's back.

I swear...

[madbawa]

...i read it as 'floating commuters keep an eye on oceans' :) My bad.

For those wondering...

[Anonymous Coward]

... "what's tree fiddy?":

Well, it's about tree dollars, and fiddy cents.

Re:For those wondering...

[TheSHAD0W]

:-)