from space we realize that water covers
most of planet Earth it is ocean waves
that transfer and maintain energy in our
atmosphere recently an international
effort between NASA and the Office of
Naval Research studied ocean waves off
the coast of Virginia with aircraft
ships and buoys it was designed to
better understand how ocean waves
develop and dissipate and how they
transfer energy between the sea and air
this information is useful in shipping
ocean monitoring systems and weather
forecasting
much of what we presently know comes
from research in wave tanks like the one
at Nashua using lasers dr. northern Wan
investigates the speed of currents below
ways
laboratory research along with few
studies like this
research vessel Creed helped determine
how waves and currents interact the
Creed is specially designed with
underwater stabilizers and
and it will see well making it a near
perfect wave
attached to her bow
scattered throughout the ship are a
variety of instruments that collect
local weather and ocean data would
create gathers information the total
visits to a meteorological Dewar's in a
sense the ship becomes a calibration
because it made such an tunisians
that's right we're eating a total item
perhaps or six five or six feet remote
sensing planes like NASA's c-130 can
cover a larger area than the Creed in
much less time
a year and have to be perfect even so
there are exciting possibilities
according to chief scientist dr. mark
Donnelly the most striking of which is
the ability to measure the surface and
directional properties away from
aircraft with what's called microwave
radar systems that look down on the
surface and either make in effect a
stereographic map of the surface by
sensing the elevation of aircraft all by
scanning it's low properties in using
that one instrument built by the
University of Massachusetts produces
circular radar scans that plot complete
profiles of in researchers a color-coded
roadmap of wave heights data from
aircraft buoys and the ship give a high
angle view of the study site during
intense weather animation shows a
storm's track with hot colors
representing the highest waves being
able to combine research tools like this
will eventually
to study
the world from space with satellites
giving us a truly global picture of our
water-covered planet