Surface Drifters and SPURS
Professor
University of North Carolina
University of North Carolina
Dr. Bingham received his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in Oceanography. His research interests include global distributions of sea surface salinity and large scale regional physical oceanography in the Kuroshio, the western North and Equatorial Pacific, and Onslow Bay, North Carolina.
Webinar Clip
Dr. Bingham explains what a surface drifter is and what it measures while at sea. During SPURS (Salinity Process In the Upper Ocean Regional Study) about 40 of these drifters were deployed to measure salinity, among other things. In this video, Dr. Bingham also shows a few schematics of how drifters actually move in the ocean, giving us an idea of how turbulent the open ocean really is.Full webinar: Follow that Salt! Results and the Future of Salinity Exploration
Click here for a transcript of this clip (PDF, 37.9 KB). |
Resources
Applicable Science Standards
- Planning and Carrying Out Investigations. Scientists and engineers plan and carry out investigations in the field or laboratory, working collaboratively as well as individually. Their investigations are systematic and require clarifying what counts as data and identifying variables or parameters.
- Analyzing and Interpreting Data. Scientific investigations produce data that must be analyzed in order to derive meaning. Because data patterns and trends are not always obvious, scientists use a range of tools - including tabulation, graphical interpretation, visualization, and statistical analysis - to identify the significant features and patterns in the data. Scientists identify sources of error in the investigations and calculate the degree of certainty in the results. Modern technology makes the collection of large data sets much easier, providing secondary sources for analysis.
- Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions. The goal of science is the construction of theories that provide explanatory accounts of the world. A theory becomes accepted when it has multiple lines of empirical evidence and greater explanatory power of phenomena than previous theories.