Table of
Contents

Director's Report

Shorelines

Celebrating a Century

Hydrostation "S"

BATS

Cruise Diary

Oceanic Flux Program

Honor Roll
of Donors

BATS
Looking for answers in the ocean
Dr. Michael Lomas discusses the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study's investigations of global climate change

After centuries of ocean exploration, scientists are just beginning to realize the enormously important role the world's oceans, with their billions of microscopic plants and creatures, play in controlling our climate. To understand how and why the biological, physical and chemical processes that continuously occur in the ocean affect changes in the atmosphere, scientists must study how these processes are changing over time. There is perhaps no better place to explore and study the deep ocean than Bermuda's ideal location in the middle of the Atlantic.

The decades immediately following World War II have been considered to be the "Golden Age of Oceanography." During this time, many expeditions were conducted into open ocean gyres. Scientists like Henry Stommel, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, took advantage of BBSR's mid-ocean location and played a groundbreaking role in the new oceanographic exploration with the initiation of the world's longest-running year-round time-series program of the open ocean, Hydrostation "S." Most ocean research during this time was expeditionary in nature, and although it provided a significant increase in our understanding of the ocean, these expeditions were designed to "explore" the ocean, not necessarily to understand the mechanisms by which the ocean works or how the ocean changes over time. These are the critical links that will allow for future predictions regarding global warming and climate change; these are the links that are currently being investigated by BBSR's Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study.  

Dr. Michael Lomas runs samples through the Alpkem Nutrient Autoanalyzer in the BATS lab. This equipment uses reagents to turn colorless dissolved nitrates, phosphates and silicates into colored compounds that can be seen with the attached spectrophotometer

With the observation that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were increasing significantly, scientists worldwide became concerned about what role the ocean might play in warming or cooling the planet. In the 1980s, U.S. scientists, joined by researchers from other nations, designed a framework, called the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study, for collecting all the information believed necessary to answer questions about how ocean ecosystems work and how oceans change over time. Under the auspices of this program, BBSR's Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS), a biological, chemical and physical time series funded by the National Science Foundation , began sampling the deep ocean to the southeast of Bermuda in October 1988.

The mission of the BATS program includes: tracking and recording seasonal, inter-annual and multi-annual variations in ocean physics, chemistry and biology; determining the processes that control surface carbon dioxide concentrations; and providing a test-bed for new methods and instrument technologies.

Bermuda was chosen as the best site for this time-series study for three main reasons. First, a successful physical and chemical time series, Hydrostation "S," was already established. Second, Bermuda was in the ideal location, only a six-hour steam away from the abyssal ocean. And third, world-class scientific facilities and support staff were readily available at BBSR. Bermuda's unique location had already proven invaluable for the longer-term success of the Hydrostation program and would provide a staging ground for more scientifically extensive efforts to understand the ocean. 

Since sampling began late in 1988, BATS scientists have been out to sea at least once a month, every month, and BATS has grown into the single largest research program currently at BBSR. To date, 197 cruises have been conducted at the BATS core station 50 nautical miles southeast of Bermuda and throughout the North Atlantic. That amounts to a grand total of more than 1,290 days at sea – that's nearly four solid years! The BATS program has also been directly involved in training nearly 40 technicians, 10 master's and doctoral students, and innumerable future scientists at the undergraduate level. 

The research conducted at BATS has led to a number of important scientific discoveries, such as the documentation of a significant increase in carbon dioxide concentrations in the surface ocean and the correlation of changes in phytoplankton community composition to low-frequency climatic patterns. We now recognize the effects of small-scale physical features, like ocean eddies, on biological and chemical variability at BATS. The National Science Foundation's support for the operation of the R/V Weatherbird I and II, which have been stable platforms for successfully conducting this rigorous time-series observatory, has made all of this research possible.

Beyond BBSR, BATS is one of the crown jewels in the U.S. national oceanographic efforts. Over the 14 years since BATS began, research conducted by BBSR scientists has been bolstered by the research programs of more than 50 other scientists from nearly as many different institutions. These institutions cover all corners of the world, from Europe to New Zealand and all points in between, and exemplify just how successful this program has been.

This map shows the distribution of home institutions, represented by black dots, of research scientists worldwide who have collaborated with BBSR's Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study program over its 14-year history

The success of BATS has been so widespread that many other time-series sites around the world have based the development of their own programs on it. Many of these programs, and most definitely BATS, are part of the evolving Global Ocean Observing System. This global system seeks to coordinate all of these oceanic observatories into a larger scientific framework. This will allow a more comprehensive look into how ocean biology, chemistry and physics work to control carbon dioxide levels, not only in the ocean, but in the lower atmosphere as well. These past successes are just the beginning: BATS, BBSR and the R/V Weatherbird II will continue to be integral partners in global oceanography, and key pieces in the complex biological puzzles of the ocean and global climate change.