In 1954, Dr. Henry M. Stommel initiated Hydrostation 'S' - a deep-water research mooring - to gather information on the physical nature of the ocean in an effort to address fundamental questions about currents and air-sea gas exchange. Since then, scientists have visited the station biweekly, resulting in the world's longest-running time-series for physical oceanographic data, including temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen measurements.
Data from Hydrostation 'S' have been used by scientists around the world for research on a variety of topics, including:
- Temporal variations in dissolved nutrient stocks;
- Phytoplankton population dynamics, seasonal cycles, and blooms;
- Variability in oceanic CO2 and biogeochemical cycles;
- Microbial genomics and dynamics;
- Inter-annual and decadal-scale variability of the North Atlantic Ocean and Sargasso Sea;
- Heat, salinity, and carbon budgets of the open ocean;
- Paleoclimate reconstructions