Since 1958, the Global Carbon Budget has tracked anthropogenic CO2 emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and land. Annual budgeting is necessary due to large year-to-year variability in CO2 sources (primarily fossil fuels) and sinks (primarily climate driven). However, uncertainties remain, due to a lack of data, that hinder both research seeking to better understand the global carbon cycle and efforts to independently verify reported CO2 emissions. To refine our understanding of how much atmospheric carbon the planet—and the life it supports—can tolerate, we must significantly increase observational data collection, especially in remote, chronically undersampled regions.
Saildrone proposes a global fleet of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) for sustained carbon monitoring, supported by a public-private partnership made up of the international science community and private companies developing innovative solutions for ocean observation.
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Saildrone proposes a global fleet of 40 vehicles to collect carbon data for sustained monitoring. Saildrone’s USVs are environmentally friendly, using wind power for propulsion and solar power to run the onboard sensors, computers, and satellite and navigation instruments. In addition to carbon data, each Saildrone autonomous vehicle collects nearly two dozen meteorological and oceanographic metrics above and below the sea surface at a frequency of 1 minute or greater.
Continue reading ‘The case for a global ocean carbon observation network’