How NOAA Satellites Monitor Ocean Health: Tracking Changes from Space

How NOAA Satellites Monitor Ocean Health: Tracking Changes from Space

0:00:01.5 John Sheehan: When it comes to NOAA and how it uses satellites, I think my imagination used to stop at the weather and how TV stations will often show NOAA satellite imagery of hurricanes and storms.

0:00:11.7 Ryan Vandermeulen: NOAA uses satellite data to track weather patterns. They can track storms and lightning and hurricanes, but also monitor hazards like fires or volcanic eruptions and, and air quality issues.

0:00:22.5 JS: What I didn't know is how much more information satellites are providing scientists across the agency right now and specifically impacting fisheries.

0:00:31.2 RV: The really great thing about satellites is that they offer NOAA a really unique ability to collect data over very large areas over short periods of time. And this not only helps us gain a better understanding of our dynamic planet, but it can also help us make informed decisions about human safety as well as the sustainable use of our natural resources.

0:00:51.8 JS: This is Dive In with NOAA Fisheries. I'm John Sheehan, and today we'll hear from Ryan Vandermeulen, NOAA Fisheries Satellite Remote Sensing Coordinator. Ryan is a font of knowledge about satellites, having worked previously with NASA's Ocean Ecology Lab. He's also passionate about making satellite data more accessible to the average citizen who maybe doesn't know that much about satellites like me.

0:01:14.8 RV: Broadly speaking, in the oceans we use satellites to understand and monitor how the aquatic environment is changing over time. Things like monitoring the ocean's temperature, it, its salt content, the direction and intensity of ocean currents, and uh, of course, my personal favorite, the signs of microscopic life or even death within the ocean.

0:01:34.8 JS: Ryan sits at the intersection of satellite technology and NOAA fisheries needs for what that technology can provide.

0:01:41.4 RV: It's my primary role to communicate the needs of fisheries to the broader satellite community and also make sure that I'm keeping up with the latest and greatest in terms of satellite technology and letting folks know what new data becomes available and potentially new ways that it might be useful for fisheries management.

0:01:57.8 JS: And as we'll hear, there are incredible advances in satellite on the horizon, in addition to the current generation of satellites collecting all kinds of data above our heads right now.

0:02:08.1 RV: Yeah, there's all sorts of different things we can look at different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, anything from X-rays to microwaves to visible light, ultraviolet light. And all these things are kind of telling you different things uh, about the environment, which is, it's really just... It kind of seems like black magic, but it's really cool. The way oceanographers are looking at the ocean is pretty similar to how meteorologists are looking at the weather, right? We're all concerned with large scale dynamics of heat, pressure, density. These are factors that are driving things like winds and ocean currents alike. And the magic here of satellites is that they're giving us insights into these really important oceanographic drivers and, and processes at roughly the same time and space scales that they're changing. In practical terms, it would take about roughly 11 years to measure what a satellite can detect in under two minutes on any given day. Right? So you can imagine that by the time a ship returns to its starting point, the information it collected 11 years ago is probably no longer representative of the current conditions. And that's not to diminish the role of ship based measurements. They're really critical to understanding things that we can't infer from satellites and even to help verify things that we can infer.

0:03:24.1 RV: But where satellites really excels in offering us repeatable broad scale measurements of the physical and biological environment, and they do so really efficiently with their ability to see things that our puny inferior human eyeballs are really capable of seeing. For instance, you know, satellites can detect thermal infrared light, which is directly relating to the temperature of the ocean. And this temperature alone uh, influences the behavior of fish, it uh, could cause bleaching of corals and affect weather along the coast and from the satellites, we're, we're seeing these temperatures rise across the globe. But we're also able to really key in on specific areas that are being impacted more than others.

0:04:06.5 JS: And can you sort of connect the dots for us for sort of how, you know, now that you have this, as you say, sort of almost real time uh, data collection of all these different factors, how does that play into uh, how managers are, are applying that towards fisheries?

0:04:23.1 RV: Yeah, there's a lot of diverse ways satellite data could be used in fisheries management and is being used. And the, really the bread and butter of, of fisheries lies in the direct observation of stock abundance and, and productivity. Right. We can't see that from satellites, but it's, it's also really important to characterize the key environmental variables that, that are impacting fisheries. So, you know, as our ecosystems are, are shifting in response to changes in our climate, we really need to understand how life in the sea is responding so we can make informed decisions about resource management now and into the future. So one cool way we can do this is looking at, say, historic catch data, or even umm, physically tracking animals with satellite tags and then pairing this information with environmental satellite data to learn about how species interact with the ecosystem.

0:05:13.4 RV: We can use this information then to build models to, to both ask and help answer questions like where and under what oceanographic conditions am I more likely to find uh, particular fish species or an endangered marine mammal. Does this overlap in time and space with where commercial fisheries are operating? You know, how can we potentially deter vessel strikes? How is the habitat of predators and prey shifting in response to a change in climate? And if we do sense a shift, can we predict future environmental conditions, really to make... To help make decisions towards more sustainable fishing practices in the future? Uh, there's other ways that we use satellite data in more direct ways, umm, including monitoring of vessel traffic uh and helping detect illegal fishing activity. Satellite imaging technology is so advanced today so much so that the individual pixels that make up an image are about the size of a laptop computer. It is so detailed, we're actually able to see and count individual whales from space. It's, it's almost sci-fi.

0:06:13.8 JS: That's incredible. Are scientists or managers, uh, interacting with this satellite data in ways kind of like a fish finder or, or even like a video game? Like, are you able to sort of see this information come down in real time and see, you know, be able to like zoom in on image, "There's a whale. Uh, pull back. Now over here, here's a tanker going across the Indian... " Like does that... Is that how it works?

0:06:38.3 RV: Yeah. There's certainly a latency period that happens sometimes, uh, depending on the... What type of satellite data you're looking at. But when it comes to uh, environmental satellite data, generally speaking, we can pull this data in, you know, every single day, you know, within hours of, of a satellite overpass. And it depends on sort of the, the management question, if you're talking about a more dynamic means of management. So there's a really cool tool that came out of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center called EcoCast. And using environmental parameters, it's able to put this into a model and predict where different types of marine animals are going to be. Some of them are things that you wanna to catch, like tuna. Some of these things are things that you want to avoid, like blue whales. It all puts this into the same model and you can kind of dial up and down to make sure that there's no overlap between these areas where blue whales tend to congregate and where you're most likely to find tuna. That's like a really adaptive way of using satellite data.

0:07:36.3 JS: So let's talk about some of the current satellite operations that are running right now. What's the GOES? GOES series of satellites.

0:07:46.3 RV: So GOES stands for the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites. And These are essentially NOAA's standing army of meteorological satellites. So there's four satellites, GOES, R, S, T and U. The last of which was, was launched earlier this year and is going to finish out this, this mission altogether. The GOES provide some really useful information about surface temperature of the ocean, while meteorologists use this to help inform hurricane intensity forecast on the oceanography side and the fisheries, we use this as a useful predictor of relevant fishery forecast. The temperature is a really critical part of the marine environment and, and a factor that marine animals can respond to on relatively short timescales. Umm, I wanna give you one really cool example. Uh, scientists at NOAA Fisheries were able to use satellite tags on sea turtles to track their migration patterns and, and match this up with satellite retrievals of sea surface temperature.

0:08:41.8 RV: But what they found was that the turtles tend to prefer and travel along a relatively narrow band of water temperatures. So from this they're able to, to develop a satellite based tool to help commercial fishermen, you know, avoid certain areas of the ocean at certain times of the year to help mitigate turtle bycatch. If you catch too many turtles in your nets, the entire fishery is shut down for the season and we don't... Nobody wants that. Uh, what I'm really excited about, what comes next is the Geostationary Extended Observations Program, or GEO-XO. This is essentially the follow on to this existing mission, except it's an order of magnitude, more awesome. No shade to the GOES mission.

0:09:24.4 JS: That's cool. What's going on? Why is it, why is it so much better?

0:09:27.9 RV: So, for the listeners, I, I do want to interlude here and just talk about sort of what a geostationary orbit is, 'cause it, it's part of what makes this mission so useful. So we're talking about a geostationary satellite. This thing is flying about 22,000 miles above our heads. It's orbiting the Earth's equator at the same exact speed that the Earth is spinning on its axis. So what that means is, from the satellite's perspective, its view of the Earth is always the same. So this, this orbit is particularly well suited for meteorological applications, like storm tracking because it can keep a constant watch on a particular part of the Earth 24 hours a day. So the, the first of these series, they were launched back in 1975 and since then it's been providing, you know, continuous imagery and, and data on Earth's oceanic and atmospheric conditions with the role of, you know, helping meteorologists issue, weather forecast and warnings. You know, when you see a movie loop of like a rotating hurricane on the news or social media, this is imagery coming from these geostationary satellites, but it also has all sorts of other cool sensors and applications.

0:10:35.7 RV: It can map lightning strikes, it can see wildfires, it can see the surface temperature of the ocean. It can even monitor changing environmental conditions from the sun's atmosphere, which I think is really cool, uh, and helps track solar storms and provide early warning about potential communication or navigation disruptions. It's, it's really essentially a, a Swiss army satellite.

0:10:57.4 JS: So what is the... What are these extended observation satellites going to do better?

0:11:04.1 RV: Yeah, the next generation of satellites, it, it's really going to be a game changer in multiple ways, because instead of being a mission uh, primarily focused on meteorological forecasting, it, it's being designed as a full environmental monitoring suite. There's two really cool sensors being added to this, this family of geostationary observations, and they're gonna be looking at air quality and water quality, respectively. One of my hats that I wear at NOAA, I serve as a user scientist for one of these new instruments on these new missions called uh, the Ocean-color sensor. We call it OCX. So it's gonna provide the ability to measure ocean color from a geostationary orbit, which is really a first for the US. This sensor is, is really specialized. It's what we call a hyperspectral instrument. It can precisely measure optical details of the ocean that help us detect and track marine hazards, as well as inform hotspots of biological activity in nearshore environments mainly. And right now, we either can't see these details or we can't see them very well, and we can't see them very often.

0:12:13.4 RV: The common goal behind all of the, the applications here is trying to build up a system that helps enable operational decision making. This would be things like being able to sense and track marine hazards, like oil spills, pollution, or red tides, you know to help local agencies mobilize or issue region specific health warnings to the public, or helping the US Coast Guard find areas of marine debris accumulation after a storm, or even generate surface currents to aid in search and rescue operations. I like to think of it this way, you know, just like if we're tracking a tornado, it's, it's really important to have the most accurate up-to-date estimate of the presence and location of ecological risks to protect fisheries, human and ecosystem health. And it's not just risks and hazards and scary stuff, you know, this this vantage point lends tremendous value to helping understand, you know, hotspots of where marine species live, eat and migrate, as well as making predictions about future productivity of fisheries in response to environmental change.

0:13:15.3 JS: Sure. And it sounds like one of the big benefits is going to be just that turnaround time of being able to see events happening and be able to res-respond, rather than... It, it's being proactive as opposed to being reactive, like getting the information, getting the bad news and then doing something about it. You're seeing it happen and you can try and take steps.

0:13:35.2 RV: That's absolutely correct. And it's also observing at scales and uh, level of consistency that we're not quite getting from our current constellation of satellites. We're going to zoom in a lot closer, so we're going to have that kind of finer spatial footprint. And we're going to have these multiple looks per day, so we're able to get around cloud cover, 'cause clouds are just the bane of our existence, so we, we cannot see under them. So that alone is gonna provide two to three times more data for us to actually utilize and be able to see these events when they're happening.

0:14:05.4 JS: And so, Ryan, you, you mentioned this a little bit, this use of ocean color to determine quality. Is that right?

0:14:11.5 RV: Yeah, among other things, yes.

0:14:13.3 JS: How does that work?

0:14:14.5 RV: All right, I'm gonna warn you, hold on to your seat here, because this is, this is uh something I get excitable about.

0:14:18.8 JS: All right, I'm ready.

0:14:19.6 RV: [chuckle] We're talking about ocean color and, and sensing this from satellites. We're literally talking about measuring the, the individual colors of the rainbow that are being reflected off of the surface of the ocean. But more importantly, how the intensity of these colors shift in response to the changing composition of ocean water. Now, there are different microscopic components of the seawater that absorb and scatter light in unique ways. Globally, the dominant signal comes from phytoplankton biomass. But other things can manifest color changes, like different types of phytoplankton or, you know, detrital material, zooplankton, fecal pellets could be dissolved river runoff or sediment stirred up from the sea floor, or it might be something, you know, more visible to the naked eye, like crude oil or, you know, maybe a large mat of, of seaweed. So each of these different materials can impart a very specific optical fingerprint on the water.

0:15:15.8 RV: And what's amazing is it doesn't need to be an intense signal that we're tracking. The sensitivity of these satellites are remarkable, you know, so much so they can detect signs of microscopic life in the bluest waters of the South Pacific Ocean. And the reason why, you know, I'm so passionate about this, Ocean color provides us with really, our only global insight into the changing biology of the ocean. It represents the beating heart of our planet. And, and when I say that, you know, I mean that nearly half of the oxygen we breathe is, is being produced by these colorful phytoplankton in the ocean. And this alone is, is but a byproduct of, you know, other important work they do. They're taking up excess carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, helping, you know, stabilize and regulate our planet, and, uh, you know, of course, forming the absolute basis of the entire marine food web and, and ultimately, regulating a $260 billion fisheries economy. Right.

0:16:08.7 RV: But there are instances, too, where not all these phytoplankton are helpful. Some are hazardous, like those that produce red tides. They'll cause massive fish kills, human health issues, along with, you know, billions of dollars of loss and tourism, real estate values, cleanup costs, all sorts of things, right? But this color signal, it tells it all, you know, a story of of life, death, stability, instability. Do I? Do I not want to go in the water today? But in order to make this relevant to our nearshore communities, we really need to look through a magnifying glass and focus the attention of the satellites really directly on those communities. And that's really what these future satellites are after.

0:16:50.0 JS: That's so interesting. And, Ryan, there are several examples of how you've taken sort of this, this color information, this color data, and translated it into sort of visual tools, visual and auditory tools for people to kind of understand and, and grasp better. For example these, all these variations of color that you'll see in satellite imagery. It's pretty hard to grasp, but you've made these tools that make it easier for people to understand them. And what I wanna mention right now is this, this tool that you've, you've converted satellite imagery into songs.

0:17:26.0 RV: Yeah. Correct.

0:17:27.2 JS: How does that work?

0:17:27.8 RV: That was a fun project.

0:17:29.1 JS: What did you do?

0:17:30.2 RV: So if you've never seen an ocean color image from space, these things are beautiful. You see all sorts of swirls of color variation where phytoplankton are blooming. They're colliding with ocean currents. It's, it's absolutely magnificent. You know, I wanted to come up with a way to conceptualize this concept of ocean color in a more universally accessible manner, especially in consideration of someone who might be visually impaired and may not be able to, you know, experience imagery in the same way many of us do. So, being a musician myself, and enlisting my talented brother, we extracted the underlying satellite ocean color data output, and instead of interpreting this into a picture, we translated the data in the image into an auditory experience. You could listen to individual colors being played like an instrument. And, and we wanted to do this with music. It had to be music, right? 'Cause this connects us across a wide variety of backgrounds. It's, it's really memorable.

0:18:29.1 RV: And, and importantly, it also invokes an emotional response. And sometimes cold, hard, objective facts just don't convey the sense of, of beauty and, and awe in the world around us. So, you know, if, if we wanna inspire action, we kind of first need to, to connect to the material, but, you know, scientifically as well, to nerd out a little more, the, the music translation also enables us to comprehend multiple dimensions of, of data simultaneously. This, this also offers a mechanism to, you know, conceptualize more layers of information that, that may be feasible through a visual representation. But consider all of the, the little subtleties you can hear and, and pick out in the symphony versus, you know, what you might be able to convey on uh, a two dimensional screen.

0:19:15.1 JS: Okay, Ryan, let's hear a little bit of, of one of the recordings. This is a sonification of satellite imagery of the Rio de la Plata.

[music]

0:19:31.5 RV: Every note you hear is extremely extracted from a satellite product called Remote Sensing Reflectance. This is the base unit of color information that we're getting from ocean color satellites. And it's telling us the specific intensity of a specific wavelength of light being reflected off the ocean. When we're playing these tracks, if you will, simultaneously you can hear these kind of harmonious interactions between the colors. And what's really cool to me is that the rises and falls of the music are responding to biological and physical elements of the sea. As we move across, uh a phytoplankton bloom, you know, we can hear the declining pitch as blue light energy is taken up to fuel photosynthesis, while the green track is, is intensifying as light is being preferentially scattered, you know, in response to particles in the ocean. And then, you will look at a specific wavelength of red light. It's just, it's tracking, tracking a physiological signal of, of, as excess light energy is being emitted out by a phytoplankton cells if, if all connected. And, you know, besides choosing a musical scale and instruments, there's... There'll be really almost no subjectivity introduced on my part. You know, the music you're hearing is just a, a manifestation of, of natural ocean variations and, and nothing more.

0:20:53.6 JS: And so that was a sonification of satellite imagery of an area of the Rio de la Plata off the coast of Argentina. And, Ryan, it's, it's really cool. I think that really demonstrates some of the complexity we were talking about. What was going on and, and what gave you the idea to sort of translate this sonically or musically?

0:21:13.8 RV: Yeah, so the... There's this experience I've heard of called the overview effect. It's this feeling that astronauts get when they're looking down on our blue planet from space. It's like this overwhelming visceral and emotional acknowledgment of like the relative insignificance of politics, war, borders. Just by seeing that, you zoom out a little bit and, and we're essentially nothing but microscopic germs on a giant blue ball hurtling through space and time. Right? And I certainly don't want to invoke any sort of existential crisis on folks. But I do think that the everyday science of the natural world can, can really easily be taken for granted. We live on a very resilient planet, but there are tipping points, and and it concerns all of us. So really, the socialization of the scientific information, it really plays a vital, you know, but underappreciated role in maximizing its relevance. So it's why it's important to make this information more accessible, is what we're trying to do with the, with the music here. You know, ultimately what I'd like to see one day is for your average citizen to understand basic ocean processes in the same way many of us intuitively understand certain aspects of the weather. Right.

0:22:21.1 RV: And, and by that I mean having this sort of data integrated into our nightly news reports or having really easy to use apps coming pre installed on our, all of our phones so where we can check local water conditions. And if we've really made it, I will know when instead of like having a, a movie Hollywood remake of Twister, there are doomsday movies about the collapse of like the Atlantic uh meridional overturning circulation that, that I can nerd out to.

0:22:47.8 JS: Well, Ryan Vandermeulen, thanks so much.

0:22:50.5 RV: Thanks for having me. This is, this has been great.

0:22:53.1 JS: Ryan Vandermeulen is NOAA Fisheries Satellite Remote Sensing Coordinator. You can read more about his work or see and hear more of his visualizations and sonifications of satellite data like the one we're hearing right now of the Bering Sea in the Arctic at our website, fisheries.noaa.gov. They're really interesting and definitely changed how I think about satellites and what they can do. I'm John Sheehan, and this has been Dive In with NOAA Fisheries.