phytoplankton – Page 3

People of PACE: Ivona Cetinić Studies the Ocean’s Microscopic Organisms

Ivona Cetinić is a biological oceanographer in the Ocean Ecology Lab at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

What is your favorite ocean or atmospheric related book or movie?

I’m a science fiction fan. Definitely “Abyss.” I don’t know why, but it’s been my favorite ever since I was a kid. I’m sure there are better ones, but it’s the only one that comes into my head movie wise. For a movie it was always, always, always “Abyss.”

What is your background? What do you do for PACE?

The image is primarily taken up by the large trunk of a tree on the right side. The left side of the image shows the background of a forest landscape. A woman is centered in the image, wearing jeans and a black jacket. She is hugging the trunk of the tree, but the tree is much larger than her and she cannot fit her arms around the trunk. — Phytoplankton cannot be hugged, but trees can ?. Image Credit: Mary Jane Perry

I am an oceanographer. I am interested in phytoplankton community structure and how it interacts with the environment, and also how the environment interacts with phytoplankton community structure. That’s how I ended up developing better tools to study phytoplankton.

For PACE, I am in charge of anything that has to do with biogeochemical processes in the oceans. Not just phytoplankton, but also the elements (such as carbon) and energy that phytoplankton move around, and other types of carbon, sediment, or organic material that float around the ocean. So, I take care of those algorithms and make sure that they look nice and pretty once we launch.

What are you most looking forward to during launch?

The launch itself, since I have never been to a single launch. So I’m excited for the countdown, and being surrounded by family, friends, and colleagues, and everybody enjoying that moment.

What are you most looking forward to post launch?

The first light images and the first data. I’m looking forward to getting to start playing with the data as soon as I can get my hands on it. We’ve been testing algorithms and I just want to get some real data!

The image is comprised of four of the same phytoplankton, each taking up one quadrant of the image. The phytoplankton is shaped like a hexagon, and each corner of the hexagon has an additional spike coming off of it. They look slightly like snowflakes. The hexagon and spike parts are bright white colored, except the bottom left phytoplankton is more of a dark blue color. Inside the middle of the hexagon is an orange color. — Microphotographs of phytoplankton species Dictyocha speculum. Image credit: Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Dalhousie University, Rajashree Gouda

Do you have a favorite phytoplankton?

I shouldn’t have favorite children! But there is one that I really like a lot – it’s called Dictyocha speculum. It’s really cute. This “guy” looks like a little star, and to me looks a little bit like the star on top of the PACE logo.

Since PACE will be looking at all these different colors of the ocean, do you have a favorite color and why is it your favorite color?

I think you’ll see me in black all the time, which isn’t a color. It’s really hard to define color because the color is dependent on the thing as well as the light that is bouncing off that thing. And when something is black, that means that eats up everything, all the light. There’s nothing coming back towards your eyes, that’s what black is. I think it just kind of goes back to my teenage years everyone was comfortable person in black. But when it comes to real colors, probably purple, lilac, bluish.

What advice would you have for aspiring oceanographers who are interested in working for NASA?

Never give up. Never surrender. Really jump at any opportunity that opens up to you, just because you will never know where it’s going to lead. And it might not lead right to where you want to go, but it’s much better than sitting in one spot and thinking “Oh, what would be happening, where would I be if I didn’t take that opportunity?” Just try to jump on any opportunities out there. I was lucky to have the doors open every time and I was just jumping in everything that was available to me. I think that’s the route that got me to NASA.

A woman is centered in the image wearing a bright red outfit with white, black, and blue patterns and designs in circular shape on the back of her outfit. The woman has down black hair with blue streaks through it. She is carrying a drum that rests on the top of her head. The drum has the same pattern of red, black, white, and blue colors on its face. — Ivona carrying her drum during one of the performances of Batala Washington. Image Credit: Robert Werner

What is a fun fact about yourself? Something that people might not know about you?

I like music a lot, and I play many instruments. Currently, I play drums in an all-women, Afro-Brazilian band.

What is one-catch all statement describing the importance of PACE?

PACE will give us a view of the ocean and atmosphere that we have never had before. It opens up so many possibilities that we don’t even know about. I think PACE is going to give us so much more insight than we expect about the ocean and the atmosphere and interactions between them.

Header image caption: Ivona happily posing with the PACE observatory. Image Credit: Dennis Henry

By Erica McNamee, Science Writer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

People of PACE: Kirk Knobelspiesse Keeps His Eyes on the Skies

Kirk Knobelspiesse is an atmospheric scientist and the project science team polarimeter lead for PACE at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He is also the polarimeter instrument scientist for the Atmosphere Observing System (AOS) constellation.

A man stands centered in the image standing straight with his arms held out on either side of him. He is standing on a tan sand dune. The sky behind him is a light blue and gray color. — Kirk Knobelspiesse hiking sand dunes near Swakopmund, Namibia, during the ORACLEs field campaign. Image Credit: Michal Segal-Rozenhaimer

What is your favorite atmospheric or ocean related book or movie?

There was a series on Netflix called “Connected” that had an episode called “Dust.” The general idea is that everything in the world is connected, so it started with dust that was generated in the Sahara Desert, specifically the Bodélé Depression. And that dust – which is really from a dry lakebed – gets lofted into the atmosphere and goes out over the oceans, and in the process interacts with clouds and potentially fertilizes the ocean. That dust makes it all the way to the Amazon basin where it may also be an important source of nutrients.

What is your background?

I am a photographer who got really into imaging of all kinds, which led me to remote sensing. I ended up doing work on remote sensing of Earth from space and worked on SeaWiFs, which was an early ocean color mission. I decided I need to go back to grad school and get a more quantitative education, so I got an applied math degree at Columbia University.

What are you most looking forward to during launch?

Earlier in my career I worked on a satellite that had a launch failure (Glory in 2011). So, during launch, I am going to shut myself in a closet and not learn any news until somebody tells me it’s all over. Because it makes me so nervous. A lot of people want to go and see the launch and that kind of thing. Not me, I’m going to stay away. Somebody will tell me when it’s all over.

What are you most looking forward to post-launch?

A man is sitting at a desk in an office. He is facing the camera and appears to be taking a selfie. He takes up the right side of the image. The left side of the image shows a computer screen and a water bottle, which the man is holding. In the background, the office door, a coat rack, and part of a whiteboard can be seen. — Kirk Knobelspiesse in his office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Image Credit: Kirk Knobelspiesse

I have a list of all the Science and Nature papers we’re hoping to write with PACE data. It’s ambitious, a little bit. But there are new types of observations that we will be making, that no other satellite will have done so far, at least not at a global scale. One aspect I’m interested in is just exploring the data, looking for basic things that will be useful for our understanding of aerosols and clouds and the climate in general.

I have some pet projects that I’ve always been interested in, for example a specific situation when aerosols are lofted above clouds. Aerosols are generally something that cools the climate because they reflect light. But if you have, say, a dark smoke aerosol on top of the cloud, it actually warms the climate, because it absorbs some of the energy that would have otherwise been reflected into space. So that’s something we’ll be able to do with PACE that we don’t really have great observations of now.

What is your favorite color and why?

I have a 10-year-old daughter, and favorite colors are very important to her and her friends. They’re always asking me what my favorite color is, and I say I can never answer them because how can you like one color without liking all the others?

Do you have a favorite type of cloud or weird atmospheric phenomena?

There’s also an optical phenomenon called glory. If you’re floating above a cloud and the Sun is behind, you look down at your shadow and you will see your shadow with a glory around it, which is like a circular rainbow around yourself. That’s one of my favorite optical phenomena.

What’s a fun fact about yourself? Something that a lot of people might not know about you?

Kirk Knobelspiesse working on the NASA P-3 during the ORACLES field campaign in São Tomé, São Tomé and Príncipe. Image Credit: Andrzej Wasilewski

I’ve been to latitude zero, longitude zero, the point in the South Atlantic Ocean where the equator and prime meridian intersect. It was part of the ORACLES field campaign. There’s nothing special there. It’s just ocean – and I don’t mean to offend my oceanographer friends by saying it’s nothing special – but there was no pillar of fire or something like that.

What advice would you give to aspiring scientists looking to get where you are today?

Don’t pigeonhole yourself into one discipline or one topic of study. Not just computer science or physics or oceanography. They’re human constructs, sociological constructs, and they don’t have anything to do with nature, other than how we have organized ourselves. A lot of where I’ve found interesting and productive things to do have been at the boundary between disciplines, or learning from one discipline and applying that approach to another discipline. So, don’t tell yourself, “I can’t do something because I’m not trained to do that.” You can learn and you can train yourself, and don’t be afraid to go out on a limb and do something you don’t really know how to do.

What is one catch-all statement describing the importance of PACE?

We will be making use of things that people cannot see – the nature of light – to understand things that we can’t otherwise observe.

Header image caption: Kirk Knobelspiesse hiking at Rachel Carson Conservation Park in Brookeville, Md. Image Credit: Barbara Balestra

By Erica McNamee, Science Writer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

The Journey of a Carbon Atom: From Space, NASA’s PACE Mission Detects Carbon in the Sky, Land, and Sea

Whether in plants or animals, greenhouse gases or smoke, carbon atoms exist in various compounds as they move through a multitude of pathways within Earth’s system. That’s why NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission – scheduled to launch in January 2024 – was designed to peer down at Earth from space to see those many forms of carbon in a way no other satellite has done before by measuring colors not yet seen from the vantage point of space.

“PACE is standing on the shoulders of some giants, but previous and current satellites are limited in how many colors of the rainbow they can actually see,” said Jeremy Werdell, project scientist for the PACE mission at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Although one of the primary goals of the mission is to measure the colors on the ocean surface, in the 420 miles (676.5 kilometers) between PACE in orbit and sea level are parts of the complex carbon web that the satellite will also be able to monitor.

The connection between major wildfires and the subsequent explosion of phytoplankton production is an example of the events NASA’s upcoming Plankton, Aerosols, Clouds, and ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission will help investigate. PACE’s suite of instruments will allow scientists to get a clearer picture of carbon as it links land use and fires, atmospheric aerosols and marine communities. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Atmosphere

From PACE’s location in space, one of the nearest forms of carbon to detect could be the wispy plumes of smoke and ash rising into the atmosphere from fires. Carbon is a key building block of much life on Earth, including plant life. When burned, the vegetation’s carbon-based molecules transform into other compounds, some of which end up as ash in these plumes.

The instruments on PACE will be able to monitor these smoky clouds, as well as other atmospheric aerosol particles, measuring their characteristics including the relative amount of smoke in different places. Combinations of these measurements made by PACE’s two companion polarimeter instruments, SPEXone and the Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter-2 (HARP2), and the detailed color measurements of the smoke made by the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI) will also help scientists identify what was burnt.

“Each instrument brings something different,” said Andy Sayer, PACE’s project science lead for atmospheres at NASA Goddard. “Putting them all together though, you’re getting the most information.” Sayer is also a senior research scientist for the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

These measurements help scientists understand more about the balance between the incoming energy from the Sun, the outgoing energy from Earth, and where it may be absorbed in between by things in the atmosphere like these smoke plumes. Even at a local level, PACE can provide information about how smoke affects air quality, impacting communities that may be near fires.

Land

Peering through the smoke particles and other aerosols, PACE can also tell us about the health of terrestrial plants and trees. Even after a devastating wildfire, fresh green plant life begins to grow and thrive. With more spectral bands and colors to see from the upcoming satellite, scientists will be able to understand what kinds of plants are recovering from fires over the years.

“In a time where we’re experiencing unprecedented climate change, we need to be able to understand how global vegetation responds to its environment,” said Fred Huemmrich, research associate professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and a member of the PACE science and applications team.

PACE will be able to monitor the different shades of colors in vegetation, and plant color can be an indicator of health. Just as house plants begin to fade to yellow if they haven’t been watered enough, plant life around the globe changes color as it experiences stress. Healthy plants take up carbon in the form of carbon dioxide as part of photosynthesis, while unhealthy plants that can’t complete photosynthesis leave the carbon dioxide roaming around the atmosphere. Given that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, these measurements also play a significant role in understanding climate change in greater detail.

By measuring a full spectrum of color, PACE will view tiny changes in pigment to detect how plants are responding to stressors, helping scientists learn whether they are utilizing the surrounding carbon or not. Previously, these colors were primarily viewed in field studies of specific areas. Stressors like droughts were inferred using weather data, but covering large expanses was difficult.

“For the first time, we’ll really be able to look at changes in the health of plants over the globe,” Huemmrich said. “It will dramatically improve our understanding of how ecosystems function and how they respond to stress.”

Ocean

From plants on land to organisms in the ocean, PACE will view the expanses of water on Earth to measure phytoplankton – the P in its name. With its ability to measure a wide spectrum of colors, PACE will now not only be able to see more across the surface of the ocean but will also help scientists differentiate between phytoplankton species.

“It’s like you were making a painting with really coarse brushes, and now you have thin, fine brushes that help explain so much more in greater detail,” said Ivona Cetinić, an oceanographer in the Ocean Ecology Lab at NASA Goddard.

Phytoplankton, small organisms that live on the surface of the ocean, play a critical role in the food chain and the global carbon cycle. Each type of phytoplankton provides a different pathway in that expansive web of routes that carbon can take, all depending on the characteristics of the plankton. One pathway may lead to the carbon becoming food for a larger species, while another may lead to carbon becoming waste, sinking deeper into the ocean.

Scientists conducting field work have found that types of phytoplankton vary slightly in color and have identified these phytoplankton on small scales. PACE’s ability to measure a full spectrum of color will help scientists tell the difference between phytoplankton on a global scale by seeing more of these colors, deepening the understanding of carbon pathways and quantities.

Though one of PACE’s key goals is to view the ocean, its line of sight looks over the atmosphere and land as well. With these expansive observations, and the massive quantities of data collected, PACE provides the ability to see in what ways the atmosphere, land, and ocean are connected, including with the complex web of carbon pathways.

“I’m energized for this opportunity for discovery that this observatory is offering,” Werdell said. “I have every expectation the world is going to do great things with these data.”

By Erica McNamee, Science Writer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center