Scripps Institution of Oceanography at Ocean Sciences Meeting

Scripps Institution of Oceanography will have a prominent presence at this year's AGU Ocean Sciences Meeting, held in San Diego February 16-21. Below are some highlights and features that our scientists will be participating in. 

The Future of Argo Town Hall 
Tuesday, Feb. 18. 12:45 p.m. - 1:45 p.m. SDCC - 3, UL
Scripps physical oceanographers Dean Roemmich and Nathalie Zilberman will participate in a town hall on the Argo program, the global array of temperature/salinity profiling robotic floats that has revolutionized global ocean observing. It is now adding multi-disciplinary dimensions, including Deep Argo which reaches into the hostile deep and under-ice floats for polar oceans. 

Progress Related to Global Deep Ocean Observing 
Tuesday, Feb. 18. 6:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. SDCC - 9, UL
Scripps biological oceanographer and deep sea expert Lisa Levin will participate in a town hall on the deep ocean, highlighting examples of emerging deep-sea observing methods and technologies. The town hall will engage the science community in a discussion of the scientific need for globally integrated deep-ocean observing, its status, and how to achieve expanded, integrated observing across disciplines and technology development. 

Press Field Trip: Tour of Scripps
Wednesday, Feb. 19, 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. (Ocean Sciences to provide transportation)
The tour will feature researchers at the Argo Lab – home of an ocean observation program that  has grown to include almost 4,000 floats and participation from 26 countries across the globe. From there, the tour will take you to the Scripps Benthic Invertebrate and Marine Vertebrate Collections, where the collections managers will discuss the millions of marine specimens housed for scientific research. The final stop will be access to the Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial Pier.

Harmful Algal Blooms Media Roundtable
Thursday, Feb. 20. 10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. 
Scripps oceanographer Clarissa Anderson and microbial oceanographer Andrew Allen will participate in a roundtable on harmful algal blooms, which are difficult to study, predict, and understand how toxins are synthesized and transferred through the food chain. This workshop will discuss the state of scientific understanding of harmful algal blooms, and the trans-disciplinary approaches being taken to improve understanding. Panelists will discuss the ability of harmful algal blooms to cross freshwater-marine boundaries, the latest successes and setbacks at prediction and mitigation, and how climate change – including rising temperatures and increasing frequency and magnitudes of extreme weather events – can promote harmful algal blooms. Anderson and Allen will also discuss the new multidisciplinary effort they are leading to study these toxic blooms as part of the NOAA’s Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms (ECOHAB) program. 

Microfibers pollution: A global monitoring initiative from Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Thursday, Feb. 20. 11:05 a.m. - 11:15 a.m. SDCC - 10, UL
Scripps marine biologists and plastics experts Dimitri Deheyn and Sarah-Jeanne Royer will present their work on microfiber pollution, specifically their global microfiber sampling and efforts to understand how these materials, which are sometimes plastic-based, degrade in the environment. The presentation will emphasize the fact that microfiber pollution is a global pollutant that needs a global response, combining various research focal areas (atmospheric, terrestrial and aquatic), innovative technology, and partnership between academia, industry, NGOs, and citizen scientists.

SOCCOM and the future of BGC-Argo in the U.S.
Thursday, Feb. 20. 6:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. SDCC - 5A, UL
Scripps physical oceanographer Lynne Talley will participate in a town hall on the past efforts and future plans of SOCCOM: The Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling program. This National Science Foundation-funded project has a primary focus of deploying a large array of Biogeochemical-Argo profiling floats in the Southern Ocean. These floats have become crucial for understanding ocean and climate change, especially in one of the harshest areas of study in the world.

Predicting storm wave runup at Imperial Beach, California
Friday, Feb. 21. 11:45 a.m - 12:00 p.m. SDCC - 9, UL
A host of researchers from Scripps’ Center for Coastal Studies and the Center for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation will discuss their research predicting tidal and storm-related flooding in the low-lying coastal town of Imperial Beach. In January 2019, as part of the Resilient Futures program, the researchers were able to accurately predict a storm event and help the city prepare for flooding. The dedicated observing network and modeling system provides information needed for early flood warnings for vulnerable locations, as well as the baseline information needed to develop and evaluate future sea-level rise adaptation strategies.

Closing Plenary
Friday, Feb. 21. 4:00 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.
SDCC - 6A-F, UL
Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography Margaret Leinen will deliver the closing plenary at Ocean Sciences 2020.