Picture the scene : a beautiful bright clear California solar day , the Dominicus is radiate , the sky is blue , the ocean ispink . hold back , what ? Well , thanks to scientists at UC San Diego ’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Washington that ’s precisely what you ’ll get if you go down to San Diego beach in January and February .
To study how fresh water leak are mixing with the sea surfzone , they’vestarted an experiment call Plumes in Nearshore Conditions , or PiNC ( see what they did there ) .
“ I ’m excited because this inquiry has n’t been done before and it ’s a really singular experiment , ” say Scripps coastal oceanographer Sarah Giddings , who is leading the PiNC sketch , in astatement .
Investigating how freshwater outflows interact with the surfzone using a pretty-hard-to-miss color. Image courtesy of © Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego
The experiment is focused on the country around Los Peñasquitos Lagoon , located within Torrey Pines State Beach and Natural Reserve in San Diego , California . The squad wants to look into how freshwater , which is more floaty and usually warmer than the sea , interact with the waves .
That ’s where the pink dyestuff come in , by colour the freshwater the squad can track where the small freshwater plume are meet the saltwater surf . The environmentally safe dye will then be tracked as it progresses , both by drone and by sensors on pole situate along the gumption . There ’s even a super C ski fitted with a fluorometer that can measure the luminosity emitted from the dye . exterior of the surf zona further sensors can measure salinity , temperature , the acme of the wafture , and the ocean current .
This is the first of the dye release with two more plotted for towards the ending of January and early February . The researcher hope that the pink dye will be able to tell them more about how sediment , pollutant , and even larvae travel into the ocean through these freshwater outflows .
“ We ’re bringing together a lot of different mass with different expertise , such that I think it ’s go to have some really heavy results and impacts,“continued Giddings . " We will flux outcome from this experimentation with an sometime theater of operations study and information processing system example that will allow us to make progress on understanding how these plumes circularize . ”
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