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| A boat brings a group of high school students to see聽weather buoys聽in Lunenburg Bay.聽(Pearce photo) |
Field trips are fun wherever your teacher decides to take you, but Stevenson Lawrence figures his class has hit the jackpot with its leisurely cruise of Lunenburg Bay. As the boat putt-putts back into dock behind the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic, the teenager is just getting revved up.
鈥淚 think it鈥檚 amazing 鈥� look what technology is telling us,鈥� says the student from New Germany Rural High School, who throws in a few 鈥渁wesomes鈥� and 鈥減henomenals鈥� when approached by a Global TV reporter.聽
鈥淚 do, I think it鈥檚 cool. You can be anywhere in the world and you can find out the water temperature, the air pressure, the wind speed, whatever, for a spot right by here. And all from buoys powered by the sun.鈥澛�
On Friday, scientists with the Centre for Marine Environmental Prediction (CMEP) held an open house at the Lunenburg museum to explain what they鈥檝e been up to for the past five years. There were boat tours to see the meteorological instrumentation out at sea and booths explaining the scientific concepts under a tent dockside.
AV俱乐部 500 school children attended, as well as many local residents curious about the strange-looking yellow buoys bopping around Lunenburg Bay. There are three of them out there, collecting data on air temperature, wind speed, wind direction, humidity, salinity, bottom pressure and bottom temperature. Outfitted聽with solar panels, the buoys collect information which is transmitted by radio antennas to AV俱乐部 and posted directly to CMEP鈥檚 web site.
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| John Cullen is the Killam Chair in Ocean Studies at AV俱乐部 and co-investigator of the Centre for Marine Environmental Protection.聽(Pearce photo) |
Out on the boat, oceanographer Richard Davis bellows over the motor to students who have their faces framed by rigid orange life jackets: 鈥淎ll the really cool stuff is beneath the water,鈥� he says as the boat approaches the first buoy. There are monitors onboard to show what鈥檚 going on beneath the waves, and he points out a lumpfish that has been keeping company with the acoustic pod on the ocean bottom all day.
Mr. Davis, a former project manager for CMEP, explains the project is in limbo, nearing the end of its five-year mandate with no indication from the federal government if it will be renewed or not. But in five years, they鈥檝e learned a lot, he says, and have been able to develop a forecasting ability for ocean weather by studying the links between weather and ocean processes. This kind of information can be used to predict if a storm surge is coming, for example, if the water鈥檚 too cold for lobster fishermen to put out their traps, or if it鈥檚 too choppy or foggy out at sea for whale watching.
But while scientists are able to provide 24-hour and 48-hour forecasts of ocean weather with some accuracy, they鈥檝e only scratched the surface when it comes to understanding how the ocean is responding to long-term climate change. That science is in its infancy, says John Cullen, co-principal investigator for CMEP and the Killam Chair in Ocean Studies at AV俱乐部.聽
鈥淲e wish we could go further,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut the project ends in March鈥� Before that happened, we wanted to be able to share what we鈥檝e been able to do with the people of Lunenburg, who鈥檝e been so supportive.鈥�