NOAA keeps watchful eye over Gulf of Mexico

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Anna-Marie Wyant
  • 927th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs
MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. --  A crew from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Aircraft Operations Center here conducted its eighth mission Friday to monitor oceanic conditions in the Gulf of Mexico since the BP oil spill that has been growing since April.

The flight on a WP-3D Orion aircraft covered an area of more than 50,000 square miles, dropping 58 Airborne eXpendable BathyThermograph and six Airborne eXpendable Conductivity-Temperature-Depth sensing devices into the gulf, which both help monitor ocean activity.

Dr. Benjamin Jaimes, a post-doctoral associate for the University of Miami, was one of two scientists on the flight working with NOAA to track changes in oceanic conditions.

"The AXBTs and AXCTDs make a 3D volume of the area covered," said Dr. Jaimes, who started participating in NOAA missions shortly after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. "Because we drop them every week, we can see the changes and compare with satellite data to make sure it's correct."

Dr. Jaimes said the AXBTs measures the ocean's temperature to a depth of up to 400 feet, while the AXCTDs measure the temperature up to a depth of 1500 feet, in addition to measuring the solidity, or amount of salt, in the water. Dropsondes, devices that measure atmospheric conditions including pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed and direction, were also released for data collection.

With the oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico at an average of more than 200,000 gallons daily, Dr. Jaimes said it is especially important to regularly monitor weather conditions in the area.

"Higher water temperatures really influence hurricanes positively, while colder temperatures produce a negative impact," Dr. Jaimes said.

In addition to monitoring potential hurricane activity, Paul T. Flaherty, a NOAA flight director, said NOAA also has been keeping a close watch over the Loop Current, a warm ocean current in the Gulf of Mexico that flows northward between Cuba and the Yucatán peninsula, then loops west and south before exiting to the east into the Atlantic Ocean. There has been much speculation that the Loop Current will spread the oil, but Mr. Flaherty said this is not yet the case.

As a flight director, Mr. Flaherty, a meteorologist, said he oversees flight operations in the plane, called "Kermit the Frog," one of only two WP-3D weather research aircraft in the world.

"I act as a liaison between the scientists, the pilots and the navigator," said Mr. Flaherty, who has worked with NOAA since 2002.

Mr. Flaherty said the flight director also tells the technicians who drop the AXBTs and AXCTDs when they are over the drop site, giving them the go-ahead to release the equipment from a hatch toward the rear of the aircraft. He said he loves what he does for NOAA because each mission is important and unique.

"It always changes; it's different every time," Mr. Flaherty said.

The NOAA Aircraft Operations Center has been located at MacDill since 1993. To learn more about NOAA and its unique missions here, visit the NOAA AOC website at www.aoc.noaa.gov.