Whet your appetite

The first swim lesson you ever took was probably just learning how to blow bubbles in the water, unless your parents decided to just throw you in the pool or you accidentally fell in. Since this is my first aquatic adventure beyond competitive sports, I feel like I'm blowing bubbles again!

---

As to why I am here?

As you may or may not know, I am currently on a weather/ocean research boat, the R/V Roger Revelle ~ 220 ft long, 50 ft wide, about 9 stories tall including the uppermost look-out deck. I've loved being at sea so far! We left from Phuket, Thailand on Nov 6 and won't return to land until Dec 10. I am just one of many scientists on the ship who are part of a 6 month field campaign to study what we call the Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO), a subtle weather pattern of thunderstorms that propagates slowly around the world along the equator. Since this weather phenomena initiates off the east coast of Africa and begins its trek across the globe in the Indian Ocean, we know it is uniquely linked to the ocean. This multidisciplinary field campaign was planned to try to understand how this air-sea disturbance begins, and why. There are over 15 universities involved, 13 countries, and at least 4 national science laboratories. Our current understanding of the MJO is mainly observational - we can see it, watch it move, watch it affect the weather and climate all around the globe - this includes El Nino, rainfall patterns in the Americas and Europe, monsoon systems, you name it. However, we haven't been so successful at forecasting the MJO, and current climate models don't perform very well because the MJO is very important part of the global climate system, but it is also one of the weakest links - goodbye! No, we can't just forget about it, we need to learn more about it. Our project is called DYNAMO - DYNAmics of the MjO.

I am one of two weather radar scientists on the third of four research cruises on this boat, which is the NE observation station in a square-ish research observation array. We've got another boat to our south and then two island observation stations making up the NW and SW stations. Lots of people and instruments looking at the same darn thing - hopefully we can make some sense of it in the years to come. For instance, I will use some of this data for my PhD project at Colorado State University. I have a coworker on board (another grad student from the Univ. of Hawaii) and we work 24/7 with alternating 12 hour shifts. I have the day shift :) We also have a NASA radar engineer on board who knows this particular radar very well.

Life Aquatic with Liz

We had our first major work hiccup today, our external hard drive malfunctioned and we had to deal with a bunch of error messages on our radar computers. But we managed to resolve all these issues within the first 24 hours of the job, both of our first 12 hour shifts. As our radar engineer said, "It's like Apollo 13. we made it through our first hiccup, now we just need to make it around the moon and back to earth." The radar got turned on two nights ago around 12 AM. We will keep cranking away until they tell us to turn it off again on our way back to Thailand. We can't scan close to land, so we had to wait about 31 hours after we left port to turn the radar on. We are headed to the middle of the Indian Ocean, which will take almost 4 days total. We can't tell anyone or post where we actually are on the internet because our location is top secret! Can't tip off the pirates... more on that later. Seriously, not a joke to anyone around here. We have been moving at about 15 kt since we left port. Other large boats can be seen around us, less and less as time goes on though. They say most of these ships are transporting cargo or fuel (crude or finished product).

We did man-overboard, abandon-ship, and fire drills yesterday. This involves life jackets, gumbi scuba suits, SOS calls for help to Coast Guard around the world, hats, alarms, and launching inflatable life rafts overboard. The man-overboard situation specifically requires you to keep an eye on the bobbing person in the water the entire time, you must not take your eyes off of them otherwise you may never spot them again, then you have to yell for help from someone else. For abandon ship and/or fire, the crew might be busy controlling a situation or putting out the fire, so the scientists might need to be in charge of inflating those life rafts and throwing them over board! If we had to abandon ship, our alarms would immediately signal our distress in many different ways across the world, and we wouldn't have to wait probably more than an hour until someone came to save us by plane or boat, most likely from Diego Garcia. However, there are food/water supplies on the life boats to last you almost a week with careful rationing. Think Life of Pi.

I've slept very, very well since being on the boat. The waves make you feel like you are being rocked to sleep in a cradle. When we are staying in one position (not in transit), the bow thrusters will go on and off to push us into the right place. These apparently sound a lot like a very loud vacuum cleaner moving up and down the hallway right outside your room. Especially my room because we are right next to the bow. I can also hear the waves smashing against the side of the boat in my room. No one has gotten sea sick - including me! The food is AMAZING. Lots of variety, delicious baked goods, vegetarian and meat items, tropical fruit. Walking on the ship and working out (balancing yoga poses) are somewhat difficult. You have to step tentatively because the rolling of the sea and the ship hitting the waves while we are in transit jostles you around. The seas have gotten rougher in the past 12 hours because we passed beyond the last set of islands, meaning we are in the open ocean. Everyone could feel a difference fairly quickly. We've been told stories about a very rough seas incident in the dining hall with a runaway economy size jar of jelly beans and a poor crew member ending up in the corner with lots of chairs piled on top of him. All doors must either be latched open or closed because there is a definite possibility for swinging doors to smash your fingers at any time. When in a room with lots of other people, it looks and feels kind of like everyone is in a whirl pool or lazy river together because you are standing around, talking, or eating just like you normally would, but everyone's head and torso will bobble from side to side at the same time and in the same way. Or you'll all instinctively throw out an arm or stumble while walking down the hall. It's synchronized entertainment. The younger contingent on the ship has planned a salt water hot tub on the main deck, which is being filled today. The air outside is always breezy, warm, and humid. It rains often, and at times very heavily, but immediately before and after these showers its incredibly sunny! There is absolutely no indication that it is November.

My schedule for the next 32 days:

3:45 AM - wake up

4-5:15 AM - workout using P90X dvds with the cook (woman named Asha) and another NOAA scientist (male named Derek) in the break room, then Asha quickly makes eggs for the three of us since we are all starving and then she goes to work in the kitchen for the full ship breakfast preparations, I get ready for work.

5:45 AM - go to computer lab to meet Owen a little before his shift ends, catch up on what's happened over the last 12 hours, any issues that I need to be aware of or work on during my shift

6 AM - start my shift, send out the 00 UTC radar summary from the previous 24 hours to the DYNAMO operations catalog (everyone in the entire field campaign reads this, plus it's publicly available I think.)

7:30 - 8:15 AM - walk up one floor to dining area to get some coffee, fresh baked muffins/breakfast breads, fresh tropical fruit. Enjoy these goodies in the dining hall with everyone else quickly or on the stern (backside) of the ship while watching the amazing sunrise over the Indian Ocean (think bright blue and yellow, soft whites and pinks, big bellowing clouds near and far)

What to do in between meal times while I am also working:

walk outside to see clouds and for fresh air periodically during my 10-15 minute long breaks, unless busy with computer stuff. I am either writing in the science log, resolving or troubleshooting some issue, or setting up the next radar scan. I can also walk over to other science lab rooms to learn about their instruments, data, research, etc .There are 7 different science focus teams on the ship: ocean mixing/currents, weather balloons, air/sea fluxes, weather radar, lidar, aerosols, and ocean optics/imagery. It's the first time I've been on a science project not completely made up of weather people, in fact we are just one of the groups, so we get to do more explaining, interpreting, and learning. Fun for the whole family! The ping pong table is also always open for a challenge.

11:30 AM  - 12:15 PM - lunch in dining hall

4:30 PM - daily ship science meeting in the library ~ walk in and out as necessary since I need to change radar scans at the :09, :19, :39, :49 minutes of the hour. We go over the DYNAMO daily report, which we download from our main website. It contains all the small- and large- scale current conditions in the atmosphere and ocean, plus forecasts. We also talk about the research we are currently working on, anything exciting that we found in the past couple days, any projects we want to collaborate on.

5 - 6 PM - dinner in dining hall

6 PM - done with work! Write a summary of the 12 hour shift, brief Owen on the highlights of the day.

6 - 8 PM - ping pong, cards, movies, reading, other work, emails, WATCH SUNSET = incredible, talk with others, star gazing.

7:30 PM on Wednesdays - Skype conference call with all major observing sites in DYNAMO array plus principle science investigators in the US. Apparently the connection is pretty poor, but it works.

Pirates, not another sequel please!

We do the pirate drill next week. Major incentives for pirates to bother us include:

1) constant feud between pirates and Americans, they will either kill us on site or take us hostage. To date, Somali pirates have killed 14 people and taken over 300 hostage. After the NAVY killed a bunch of pirates, they vowed to take revenge if they caught any of us.

2) we are in a NAVY boat, which would be a huge prize for them

3) we are federal scientists so they could ask for billions of dollars instead of millions in ransom

4) they aren't really that interested in our scientific equipment, even though all of it is EXTREMELY expensive and valuable, but they would probably sell it on some market or for scrap metal

5) they may or may not know that we are unarmed, but we are able to maneuver 360 degrees very easily and quickly, we are much larger than most pirate ships, and we have water cannons.

There have been suspicious pirate encounters on these research boats in the past, one of which was on the previous research cruise last month. The ships either positioned themselves so that we were constantly facing them - letting them know we were ready for them and poised to take action, or we circled around them quickly many times and almost sunk their smaller ship in a whirl pool. There was another situation in 1996 where some pirates on a small, inconspicuous fishing boat were asking for water over the radio, holding up empty water jugs, asking for food, etc. Our ship told them to go away, we didn't want to help. They wouldn't go away, so our ship sailed around them really fast to see the back of their ship, which revealed more men waiting with weapons. Since their plan was foiled, they went away and everything was fine. But in the next couple weeks, some pirates played the same trick on another boat and ended up getting on board their ship, killing everyone, and taking over the boat. Good thing that wasn't us! In the event of a real pirate attack on this boat... we perform our secret pirate drill which I'll have to tell you about in person because pirates are searching the internet for this kind of insider information! For instance, normally the SCRIPPS research boats publish our exact location and live images of what we are up to on the internet. However, we are in pirate territory so everything is being kept on the down low. We don't know how much English pirates speak/read but we must err on the safe side.

Oh the people you'll meet...

One of the greatest things about the ship experience is the people. Many people on the boat (57 total out of the 65 max occupancy) are SCRIPPS / Univ. Calif San Diego employees who rotate a couple months working and then a month or so on vacation between the R/V Revelle and R/V Melville, which are both SCRIPPS science research ships. Most scientists on board are in ocean related research careers which brings them to sea on field projects much of the time. Basically, way more often than most of us desk-job scientists get to spend time near the water. The chief scientist that I will be working with a lot for my PhD project has already spent 3.5 total years at sea during his research career. He says the ocean time feels more like the real world to him. The research comes alive and you get your hands dirty... or in this case, get your hands wet. Everyone on the boat has traveled a lot, experienced many walks of life, and is generally very excited and good at what they do. I'm accumulating ideas about more traveling/trips/activities I'd like to pursue or plan in the future. The ship's crew who mainly fix and maintain things around the ship (very important!) are great too because they all seem to have big personalities. Reminds me of working for the forest service and being around the fire crew.

The captain, 1st, 2nd, 3rd mate, and chief engineer literally run the ship, no matter what the chief scientist says, even though he is also a VIP. All of these people on the top of the totem pole get larger and better bunk rooms on top of the ship above the main deck where you can't hear the bow thrusters at night. The chief engineer and the captain helped design this very boat (finished in 1996 by the NAVY). They said they had to take it apart after the NAVY was finished though and then put it back together their own way so that it would actually work. Either way they have been with it since its very first planning meeting. They command respect, but are also very laid back and funny. Conversations are enlightening, revealing a completely different way of life. Every aspect of ship life and work has a reason and a rhyme, unlike other jobs where you are constantly frustrated with feelings of "Why do I have to do it this way? Who thought this up? What were they thinking when they planned it this way?" At sea, there is no room for error or inefficiency, and everyone is so close that issues get hashed out pretty quickly one way or another. I went up to the bridge where all the mates and chiefs work yesterday morning and yesterday night to see what it was like up there - very important ship watching, navigation, communication business. They work 4 hours on this top level deck/look out area call the bridge, 8 hours off, 4 hours on back at the bridge, and then 8 more hours off so they don't get too bored or tired while on watch. They fulfill other duties on the decks below during some of their 8 hour "shifts." The black box in the bridge records the last 24 hours of every conversation up there. Everything goes into super dark night-mode once the sun goes down so they can watch for any rogue ships in the moonlight (which is really bright!). Pirate ships probably won't have lights on, and neither will a random wooden fishing boat. Every ship is supposed to have a few lights on though, one lower in the back of the ship and one higher up in the front of the ship so that you can tell where the ship is headed simply by looking at it. The sonar system on board also tells you what the ship name, origin, type, heading, etc. Then you can look up that ship number online in a ship database to see actual pictures of the ship and more information. Fancy schmancy. I asked some of the mates/chiefs/captain about the stereotypes that have developed about working with scientists all the time - they wouldn't tell me what they were but they assured me that I've already fulfilled some of them. Something about walking around and being curious about everything and everyone. But they all agreed that they like the energy of the younger scientists, as opposed to some science groups who either keep to themselves or are sort of "over it," as if they've seen it all.

The only time on the ship that I've felt uneasy or anxious was the first afternoon when I was below deck in my room by myself unpacking. But being with everyone else, working, and being outside is a complete blast. I really am enjoying my time out here. It's nice not to have to go shopping, cook, clean, plan activities, or commute (even though I do miss my bicycle rides around Fort Collins). It really lets you do your job well and more efficiently. The schedule is repetitive, but can be relaxing in this way. A welcome relief after the hectic preparations for this trip.

More about DYNAMO:

http://www.eol.ucar.edu/projects/dynamo/

I've posted some pictures on facebook of her majesty the R/V Revelle and of time spent enjoying Thailand before we got on the boat. When we get back to Thailand I’m going to do a sea kayaking trip to some other islands nearby, enjoy some Thai massages, eat more spicy food, and maybe go on an elephant trek.

I'll send another update at some point!