How robotic floats coaxed secrets of climate change from the ocean

After 10 days at sea, the research vessel Oceanus is back in port and the team of Berkeley Lab and Berkeley scientists, plus students, is back on dry land assessing the results of their mission: to fine-tune robotic floats capable of measuring carbon cycles in the ocean, an important source of information about climate change.

In this video, the mission’s lead scientist, Jim Bishop, explains just how significant the robots — carbon flux explorers — are to the collection of such data, and what the trip accomplished. Bishop is senior scientist at Berkeley Lab’s Earth and Environmental Sciences Area and a professor of marine science at UC Berkeley’s Department of Earth and Planetary Science.

Lab writer Sarah Yang, who documented the trip from aboard Oceanus, posted her wrapup here, with a slideshow.