We are all affected by ocean conditions, and we're talking about huge things like global food security and human health, to fisheries we depend on, to the transport of a whopping 90% of the world's goods. So it's vitally important to understand ocean conditions.
What can the fascinating field of ocean forecasting tell us about the future for us on land and for life under the sea?
Want to learn even more? Click here to read the report "Forecasting the Ocean."
This episode was hosted by Carlyle Calhoun, and Eva Tefaye conducted the interview. Our theme music is by John Batiste, and our sound designer is Emily Jankowski. Sea Change's managing producer is Carlyle Calhoun.
Sea Change is a WWNO and WRKF production. We're a part of the NPR podcast network and distributed by PRX. SEA change is made possible with major support from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. It's also supported by the Water Collaborative of Greater New Orleans. WWNO’s Coastal Desk is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, the Mereaux Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation.
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TRANSCRIPT
I love the ocean. The way the waves crash or lap on the shore, the salty air, the weird little creatures in there. I mean, just picture a seahorse, how amazing are they? The ocean is so big and mysterious,
But of course this is a science show and we are fascinated by all the ways scientists are working to demystify the ocean. no matter where you live.
We are all affected by ocean conditions, and we're talking about huge things like. Global food security and human health to fisheries, we depend on to the transport of a whopping 90% of the world's goods. So it's vitally important to understand ocean conditions and in the era of climate change, it's more important than ever to understand how these conditions will change and what impact that will have on both sea life and US humans?
I'm Carlyle Calhoun, and you're listening to Sea Change.
Today we're learning about the fascinating field of ocean forecasting. Our coastal desk reporter, Eva Tesfaye talks to Leila Hamden.
She's a marine microbial ecologist investigating the tiny organisms in our ocean. And she's the Associate Vice President of Research for coastal Operations at the University of Southern Mississippi,
Leila contributed to a recent report for the National Science Foundation about the future of ocean science and a woman after my own heart, she made sure to advocate for the gulf
Leila: I will share with you, I walked in and said, I care about the Gulf. I care about it a lot. It is in my, it is in my life every day. Um, I look out the windows at the research lab that I work at, and I see it. I look out my windows at my house and I see it. I walk my dogs by it. It's so important. And it, it's just an allure to so many scientists.
Coming up Eva's conversation with Leila Hamden.
Eva: Welcome Leila.
Leila: Hi. Glad to be here.
Eva: We all know about weather forecasting. Most of us use that information daily, checking our weather apps to plan our daily activities, but not as many people probably know about ocean forecasting.
So first of all, what exactly is ocean [00:02:00] forecasting?
Leila: ocean forecasting is. Somewhat of, um, a new term, although, you know, not by any means a a new concept. Even if you think about a forecast with like, um, a palm reader, you're getting that information fora purpose. You wanna know what decisions, you know, that I can make in my life, to have a better outcome.
Even though there's no science, obviously be behind the palm reading, but it's sort of the same Concept we wanna look at today, understand what we're doing today and how it could influence a future state or future condition. and, uh, with ocean forecasting we're, you know, applying a lot of the knowledge that, uh, we have about, weather forecasting and using the same information to understand things like, tides the movement of, uh, of water or currents around the globe. and something that, you know, we're starting to dip our toes into is, you know, can we use these same ideas and same principles and apply that to living things in the ocean? And look ahead at how they may, change or respond or, or exist in a future state.
Eva: Yeah. So could you talk a little bit like, why do we need to forecast the ocean? I.
Leila: you know, I, I think that there's, there are, are hundreds of reasons why we might wanna, to forecast the ocean. everything about the, the ocean. Impacts life on this planet. we all know that if you look at the earth from outer space, it, we call it the blue marble. It's, it's covered, um, with water and, and everything in the ocean. And the movement of water in the ocean and, and also the movement of air, even across the surface of the ocean, is impacting, Our weather, our climate on land, it's impacting how, you know, crops can potentially grow. But on a more, um, direct, level, the things that live in the ocean are, responding to, all of those conditions, We have a lot of organisms that live in the ocean. microbes you may never see them, you know, but they're out there doing really important things. but you know.
Fish, shellfish, marine mammals. we see them out there. We know that they're out there. And with some of them, how they're going to change in response to a changing ocean that has direct relevance to us.Um, you know, 40% of the domestic supply of, seafood, in the United States comes out of. Just a couple of states, in the Gulf, region. And so if those organisms are responding to changes in, ocean chemistry, ocean heat, that's gonna have a direct relevance to us as humans because we rely on them for our food source and our sources of economic development and sustainability.
And so we, as scientists, we can provide the basic information. That could feed into forecasts so that we can know in 10 years from now, in 20 years from now, um, will shrimp still be a viable source of protein? you know, will this fishery still be able to meet the demand that we are placing on it? And if it can't, what can we do right now to affect that? How do scientists do or ocean forecasting? what kind of things are they looking at? What kind of technology do they use? The fundamental need to be able to do any kind of forecast is to, is to understand today, you know, what do the conditions look like today? and forecasting can take, Any size or scale? I, I study microorganisms in the ocean, so that's on the, extreme microscale, but it could even go smaller than that with, uh, the, the chemistry of the ocean. For instance, you know, in my own discipline of microbial ecology, um, we know that microbes are everywhere on this planet. They're the oldest living things. they've evolved with every earth system process. And if we go back in time, and we're able to take a snapshot. Thousands of years ago of the microbes that were present at that time and asked the questions, why are you here? How did you get here?
And so it's this leapfrogging, um, activity of constantly checking in, with such a vast system like the ocean and saying, on a fundamental basis, what do you look like right now? How did that occur? And how can we use that information to know how that's gonna change life and chemistry and the physical dynamics of the ocean tomorrow?
Eva: So I was wondering if you could maybe talk about how ocean forecasting, compares to weather forecasting in terms of like how long we've been doing this, how long has this been a focus?
Leila: Weather forecasting as we know it, has, um, a great deal of focus on, what matters. To human beings on, on, uh, fairly short time scales. you wanna be able to pull open a, a forecast in the morning and know something as simple as, what shoes should I wear today? Um, we also wanna, um, look at, um, weather forecasting to know what. The season ahead is gonna look like, you know, am I gonna have to have a plan to get my boat out of the water if it's gonna be a particularly active hurricane season?
And, uh, just yesterday I think we got the, a little bit of a preview from NOAA um, which is the, most important forecast weather forecasting agency in the United States about what hurricane season might look like this year. You may take that information back and say, okay, do I wanna, do I wanna buy a house up, you know, near the water? When should I sign up for, you know, flood insurance and so forth? So all of that, you know, are on short timescales and, and things that matter to us in our lives right now. With our lives largely on land. And so as a field that has a longer, lead time on it because, because so much practical information comes out of those forecasts, ocean forecasting is woven into that.
But our ability to do ocean forecasting is very much directly connected to our ability to get out in the ocean. And, you know, in the United States, um, we have been doing, ocean research for, many, many decades. But our, ability to really get out there and get far into the ocean is, you know, only about, uh, 50 to 60 years old. And that's tied to the, the timeline that, we as a nations. Stood up a, uh, stood up the National Science Foundation. which is the only fundamental research entity for the United States, then came standing up of the University National Oceanographic Lab system, which runs all of the oceanographic vessels.
And so, you know. Once those vessels were available, we were able to get out into the ocean further and further and start to understand things like, well, how warm the ocean is has a connection to how storms develop and how those storms move. Along the East coast or into the Gulf Coast, and ultimately how they find their way onto land.
And so there is a bit of a lag, in terms of the history of ocean forecasting behind more of our on land weather forecasting. But we are, as a scientific community, trying to close that gap, because that information is so relevant and so important to everything that we do as humans that live on land.
EVA: So yeah, where does the Gulf fit into this next decade of ocean forecasting?
Leila: So one of the things that we discovered through the process of, of developing this report, is we, you know, we surveyed where research is occurring, how it's occurring, what kind of infrastructure is supporting that research. And we have picked up, in a couple of places that, there are gaps in our coverage of the Gulf system and in our knowledge of the Gulf system.
The other coasts of the US have long-term ecological, studies that are, are supported, you know, into decades so that you can have that, long trend of information. You know, how has the system changed over time?
And that gives us that amazing ability to have that prediction, moving forward. Historically the Gulf has not had that kind of resource, uh, to conduct those types of studies. We do have one thing, you know, going for us, within this system. We had a, you know, a major catastrophic event that happened in, in 2010. Um, the Deep Water Horizon spill and that. That kicked off and ignited a tremendous amount of interest, and inquiry into the system. It's unfortunate that it has to be precipitated by such a catastrophic event, but I think that it serves us well to turn that kind of, um, challenge into an opportunity. And one of the opportunities that emerged from that is that scientists, across the system, were able to go into their historic documents and, and pull out information and say, you know, I have this baseline. Data, you know, from decades and decades prior to this.
And, and the more that that happened, the more we were able to compile those information into one central place, um, that is, that is hosted by NOAA and be able to say, what did things look like before this, this event? How do they look like now and how are those two pieces of information gonna help us inform the path forward in terms of, of, uh, restoration, in terms of recovery, in terms of, the next challenge that may come to the system and a result of that, you know, is the discovery in a lot of ways of the many facets of the Gulf system. It created a point in time for us to start, looking forward to. And it also has resulted in a long-term restoration effort, that many of us are still involved in today.
And in fact, my team just came back just yesterday, um, being offshore, sampling mud around the Deep Water Horizon wellhead to be able to continue that. Forward, look of, you know, how, how different does the system look today than it did 15, 15 years ago, almost to the day, 'cause we're coming up on the anniversary, anniversary of that event.
But it shouldn't take just a catastrophe for us to want to have that kind of long-term look. Um, we also need to pay attention to how, um, science is resourced in this system. We do know that currently there is, there is, but one, research ship that's able to get far, uh, offshore into the Gulf environment and do these longer, deeper, um, more in depth studies and, uh, when you're down to one thing that should concern all of us,
So that's, I think some of you know, the future things that we should be looking at, uh, in, in the Gulf. But there are fisheries out there that, you know, we, we know very little about. There are chemistry processes that we know very little about. we have very few measurements of deep currents in the Gulf.
And if those currents are moving heat and moving, materials and chemistry into and out of the system, it's affecting the Atlantic system. And so the better we know our own backyard, the better we're able to predict these surrounding oceans.
Eva: Yeah. Yeah. Super interesting. I wanna talk about climate change a little bit. So why is forecasting the ocean important, specifically when we're talking about dealing with the impacts of climate change?
Leila: you know, so, so, so climate change as a term it's an enormous topic it's almost, you know, couched in a way that's, that's really scary. And anytime something is that big and scary, we, we are best served by picking off pieces of it and pulling those pieces off, holding them in our hand and looking at them from our own individual perspectives.
So one of the focal areas, um, of our report was understanding extreme events if we know where those are likely to occur, um. How frequently they are to occur, even when they might occur. We have the ability to put information into the hands of every citizen that they can use to make everyday decisions in their lives.
Should I build a house on the beach, on, you know, a place that has been struck, you know, multiple times by, by a major weather event, you could take that information back and make an informed decision. But it's, it's also not just about coastal communities. It is quite a lot about coastal communities because these coastal communities stand on the frontline of the impacts of climate change.
But you could pull this into the center of the country where there is a farmer that is trying to produce crops to feed people wherever they are in the United States. And it could impact as simple decisions of, you know, when should I put fertilizer? On this field so that it all doesn't just get washed away by a rain event. When's the best time to harvest? Is there a higher. You know, propensity for damaging events to come through that might damage the crop, or can I get it out of there before that happens? And, and those really fine tuned predictions, we are not there yet. And the way that we get from here to there is having that greater understanding of how the ocean is influencing all of those climate and weather processes that we need to know about.
Eva: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And I love that you tied it into further inland issues. So. I wanna talk about, you know, there are some big challenges right now facing the future of ocean forecasting. We've had a lot of budget and staffing cuts at NOAA, and I was wondering if you could talk about how that might affect the future of ocean forecasting, ocean science.
Leila: Yeah. Um, you know, ultimately one of the, the things that we wanted to convey about, um, ocean science in this report is the idea of all hands, you know, all hands on deck. We need all hands in the challenges that we're facing, um, that are facing the ocean and, when we truly have all hands in, we're able to bring into that the perspectives of, of everyone. The things that are important to them as individuals, as communities, and be able to elevate those thoughts and ideas to the surface so that they can get scientific attention.
When we look at an agency, um, like NOAA um, this is a tremendously important agency, um, to the, you know, the safety, prosperity, and security of every person that lives in this country. You know, not, not just because of the efforts to help us predict, um, things like weather and tides. uh, the availability of, of fish as a food source, um, you know, it on a fundamental level, the research that happens at NOAA is important to all of us. And the data that NOAA holds onto, um, these are the secrets of our planet. and Noah makes a great effort to make those data available to anybody that may have use of them, And that means somebody, you know, 20 years from now may pull a data set, that was collected today and do something extraordinary with it that has direct benefit to every single human being.
But for that to happen. We need the people there, at the agency doing the work, caring about the work, and helping shape the work at the agency.
Eva: So I mean, we've talked about kind of the things that might, um, get in the way of this next decade of ocean research, but, is there anything that you're really excited about that is coming up in, in ocean research and in your field in particular?
Leila: With science innovation, it sort of comes in waves. Um, and, and we are in my particular area of, of research, we just came through, in the last 15 or or so years, this incredible wave in technology innovation. Um, when I, when I started as a graduate student, you know, to be able to understand what microbes are out there and, and what they're doing. It was really hard. You know, we had to grow them in the lab and that's not an easy thing to do if you're trying to grow something that's lived on the bottom of the ocean in a cold, dark, high pressure environment.
But now that that technology stabilizing a little bit, we could move away from methods, develop it and start asking the question, what are these microbes doing? How did they get here? How are they touching every aspect of earth systems? And how can we tune our analytical ears to, to receive the whispers that these small organisms that live in the darkest, coldest places on earth are telling us they're screaming at us. Listen to me, you know, I can tell you everything that's happened here in the past. I can help you predict the future. So I'm super, um, excited about that.
I'm also super excited about how, you know. Biological concepts can be merged with, other technologies in, in autonomous vehicles. How can we program a large, autonomous underwater vehicle to go explore a place that we've never seen before? But go beyond exploration and while you're there, do some fundamental research like that. For me, to be able to be at that moment where we can do both at once is super exciting.
And I love that we are at the moment, in this decade coming up, that we can really turn that into an operation. So that's pretty cool too.
Eva: Yeah, that sounds really cool. This has been such a fascinating conversation. Thank you, Leila, for being here.
Leila: Thank you. I enjoyed it. And, uh, and uh, I hope we get to chance to talk again.
Thanks for listening to Sea Change. This episode was hosted by me, Carlisle Calhoun and Eva Tefi conducted the interview. Our theme music is by John Batiste, and our sound designer is Emily Janowski. Sea Change is A-W-W-N-O and WRKF production.
We're a part of the NPR podcast network and distributed by PRX. SEA change is made possible with major support from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences. Engineering and medicine. It's also supported by the Water Collaborative of Greater New Orleans WWNO’s Coastal Desk is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, the Morero Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation. We'll be back in two weeks.
