Seminar

Abstract

The NOAA Fish Lidar was initially conceived as a tool for NOAA fisheries managers. During the development, test, and evaluation phases over the last 12 years, several serendipitous observations have been made of features of the biogeochemistry of the upper ocean that relate to climate processes. Of particular interest has been the formation of thin layers of plankton in response to stratification in the ocean. This affects ocean productivity and also the export of particulate organic carbon to the deep ocean. Airborne lidar provides information on these layers on spatial and temporal scales not previously accessible. Other examples of data provided by the lidar include the distribution of bubbles and of dissolved organic carbon in the upper ocean. Finally, the lidar also responds to aerosols in the atmosphere just above the ocean, and two examples of aerosol production are presented - one of spherical aerosols produced by decomposition of phytoplankton and the other of non-spherical aerosols (soot?) produced by emission from a ship.