Alameda, CA-based USV (uncrewed surface vehicle) startup Saildrone is on a mission to conduct oceanographic research to gain insight into the impact of the Gulf Stream on weather and climate. Partially funded by a grant of over $1 million from Google.org, through its Impact Challenge on Climate, Saildrone’s Explorer will collect data that has the potential to transform weather forecasting and the ability to create more accurate global carbon budgets.
“Weather is becoming more extreme, and as a society, we must get better and smarter at predicting it in order to protect our communities,” said Rowan Barnett, head of Google.org for EMEA and APAC. “We are enthusiastic about the potential for this project to leverage technology to contribute towards that goal.”
Saildrone’s ambitious project will launch six USVs from Newport, RI, that will spend 12 months traversing the Gulf Stream at various points across the Atlantic Ocean. The mission will collect critical data at a resolution not possible previously, yielding new insights into the transport of heat and carbon around oceans.
“We are delighted to be collaborating with Google on this amazing project that will dramatically improve understanding of critical climate processes,” said Saildrone Founder and CEO Richard Jenkins. “We believe this data will enable more accurate predictions of our future, which will in turn help guide global climate policy and decision making.”
Climate mission
Saildrone will lead the mission in collaboration with some of the world’s leading weather and climate scientists. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) will lead weather-forecasting research. The University of Rhode Island (URI) will lead carbon-measurement research using Saildrone data collected with the industry’s most accurate and proven pCO2 sensor, developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) and integrated into the Saildrone under a joint cooperative R&D agreement. NOAA PMEL will support quality control and post-processing of the carbon sensor data in collaboration with Dr. Jaime Palter, Associate Professor of Oceanography at URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography.
The Gulf Stream is a fast-flowing, warm, ocean current in the western North Atlantic Ocean, which is influential on weather and climate in Europe and around the globe. It can absorb large quantities of carbon dioxide, providing a massive economic value in terms of its role in keeping CO2 from warming the planet. During the winter, the mid-latitude storm track sends weather systems over the Gulf Stream, creating strong currents and harsh weather conditions that are challenging for critical ship-based data collection and dangerous for scientists and crew.
“70% of the world is covered by oceans, and they control crucial aspects of both weather and climate,” said Palter, who has studied the North Atlantic for nearly 20 years. “The storms that feed off of [the] Gulf Stream heat also pump CO2 into the ocean at some of the highest rates globally. As the Gulf Stream responds simultaneously to warming, shifting winds, and the impact of melting sea ice and ice sheets, there is an urgent need to quantify its role in carbon uptake, to predict its stability or vulnerability in the future.”
“The location of the Gulf Stream and the sharp temperature differences on either side can have a big impact on weather forecasts and climate predictions,” said Philip Browne, a research scientist at ECMWF. “We are excited to be able to target saildrones to collect data from this physically and scientifically challenging region and begin exploiting the information they will provide to help improve our earth system approach to forecasting.”
Raising ocean awareness
In general, Saildrone is hoping to raise understanding and awareness of the ocean’s critical role in driving key systems that affect humanity, including global weather, climate, fish abundance, and ocean acidification. Helping Jenkins on the mission are key chiefs like Andrew Schultz, CTO; Barak Ben-Gal, CFO; and Karen Dacres, CLO. They are being aided by Brian Connon, VP, Ocean Mapping; Todd Davis, VP, People; Robbie Dean, VP, Operations; Eric Lindstrom, Chief Scientist; David Russell, VP, Production; Susan Ryan, VP, Marketing; Kimberly Sparling, VP, Product; Chris Sullivan, VP, Software Engineering; and Andy Ziegwied, VP, Ocean Data.
Since its first science mission in the Arctic in 2015, Saildrone has worked to measure climate quality data from Earth’s most remote oceans and deliver that data to scientists all over the world.
In January, the company introduced its Surveyor, which it calls the world’s largest and most advanced autonomous surface vehicle for ocean exploration.
Enhanced seabed mapping is said to be vital for the security, safety, and economic health of nation-states, and is critical to the growth of the “Blue Economy,” which, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), is valued at $1.5 trillion a year and creates the equivalent of 31 million full-time jobs.
Coinciding with the start of the United Nations’ Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, the launch of the Surveyor is said to present a paradigm shift in enhanced seabed mapping, which is currently done with large and expensive manned ships. Uncrewed and powering its robust sensor suite by harvesting renewable energy, the USV delivers an equivalent survey capability, but at a fraction of the cost and carbon footprint of a traditional survey ship.
According to Saildrone, with less than 20% of our oceans mapped, we know more about the topography of the Moon and Mars than we do about our own planet. Yet, the shape of the seabed is critical to understanding ocean circulation patterns—affecting climate and weather patterns, tides, wave action, sediment transport, tsunami wave propagation, underwater geo-hazards, and resource exploration.
“NOAA is supporting the development and testing of this new uncrewed system because we are confident it will expand the capability of our existing fleet of ships to help us accelerate in a cost-effective way our mission to map, characterize and explore our nation’s deep ocean territory, monitor valuable fisheries and other marine resources, and provide information to unleash the potential of our nation’s Blue Economy,” said Alan Leonardi, Director of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research.
In 2019, NOAA provided a three-year grant through the National Oceanographic Partnership Program to the University of New Hampshire, in partnership with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and Saildrone, to integrate and test sensors on the Surveyor for mapping the seafloor and revealing life in the water column. While conducting the mapping, samples of “environmental DNA” will be collected to reveal the genetic composition of organisms inhabiting the water.
“The launch of the Surveyor is a huge step up, not just for Saildrone’s data services but for the capabilities of uncrewed systems in our oceans,” said Jenkins. “For the first time, a scalable solution now exists to map our planet within our lifetime, at an affordable cost.”
Two USVs: the Surveyor and Explorer
The Surveyor is the 72-ft (22-m) version of its USV, known generically as a saildrone, powered by wind and solar energy for extreme-duration missions of up to 12 months in the open ocean. It leverages the same patented wind-powered technology as the 23-ft (7-m) Explorer.
The smaller Explorer is designed to carry a payload of sensors to collect data above and below the sea surface. A 5-m (16.5-ft) wing provides wind power for forward propulsion and solar panels power onboard science and navigation instruments.
The latest and largest version, the Surveyor carries sonar equipment capable of seafloor mapping down to 7000 m (23,000 ft). The ship transits autonomously to and from any area of the ocean under wind power and uses the engine to perform IHO-compliant surveys. The vehicle is outfitted with two multibeam echo sounders of differing frequencies, providing the capability to collect full-coverage, high-resolution bathymetry. It is also equipped with a suite of single-beam echo sounders, two ADCPs (Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers), an MVP (Moving Vessel Profiler), and a CTD sensor to collect water column and seafloor characterization data. With a speed of 10 knots, the Surveyor provides persistent and scalable bathymetry capabilities in the most remote areas of the ocean—and in any weather conditions.
The capabilities of Saildrone’s autonomous vehicles have been proven in numerous operational missions for science, ocean mapping, and maritime security, covering over 500,000 nautical miles from the Arctic to the Antarctic. The Saildrone fleet has logged more than 10,000 days at sea in some of the most extreme weather conditions on the planet.
Saildrone is hoping to accelerate many of the global mapping initiatives seeking to give us better insight into our own planet, efforts like The Nippon Foundation–GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project, a collaboration that aims to produce a definitive map of the world ocean by 2030, and the 2019 White House Memorandum on Ocean Mapping that calls for a national strategy for mapping, exploring, and characterizing the US exclusive economic zone.
