The German research aircraft HALO is currently being prepared for deployment in New Zealand at its home base at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen: During the "HALO-South" mission, which will begin in September, researchers led by the Leibniz Institute of Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) will investigate the interaction of clouds, aerosols, and radiation over the Southern Ocean. To this end, HALO will spend five weeks conducting measurement flights over the oceans of the clean southern hemisphere from Christchurch, New Zealand. Since it went into service in 2012, HALO has only been used this far south once before. The mission in New Zealand is therefore a first: never before has a German research aircraft investigated the South Pacific and the adjacent Southern Ocean in this region. The aircraft measurements during ‘HALO-South’ are mainly funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) with contributions from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (MPIC) and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR). They mark the start of intensive research cooperation between Germany and New Zealand.

 

The researchers hope that the measurements will not only provide important data for optimizing weather forecasts and climate models in the little-explored southern hemisphere, but also provide a better fundamental understanding of how the atmosphere and clouds will respond to a decline in anthropogenic emissions in the coming decades. For the team, looking into the cleaner atmosphere around Antarctica is therefore also a glimpse into the future. 

 

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Along the coast, waves break with a familiar sound. The gentle swash of the surf on the seashore can lull us to sleep, while the pounding of storm surge warns us to seek shelter.

Yet these are but a sample of the sounds that come from the coast. Most of the acoustic energy from the surf is far too low in frequency for us to hear, traveling through the air as infrasound and through the ground as seismic waves. 

Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have recently characterized these low-frequency signals to track breaking ocean waves. In a study published in Geophysical Journal International, they were able to identify the acoustic and seismic signatures of breaking waves and locate where along the coast the signals came from. The team hopes to develop this into a method for monitoring the sea conditions using acoustic and seismic data.