October 15, 2026 — What can a buoy tell us about ocean acidification? Quite a lot, especially when it has been collecting measurements for years.
In the California Current, a slow moving southward current that moves from British Columbia to Baja California, long-term observations help scientists track how ocean conditions change over hours, seasons, and years. Since natural phenomena like upwelling and El Niño rapidly alter water chemistry, continuous observations are vital for separating short-term fluctuations from broader ocean acidification trends.
Join Scripps Institution of Oceanography (Scripps) graduate student, Charles Lindsay, at sea as the recent Ocean Time-Series group, led by Uwe Send, deploy and maintain an ocean monitoring mooring off Southern California. In Anchored in the California Current: A Buoy’s View of Ocean Oscillations, readers are taken aboard a “day in the life” look at the work behind long-term ocean observations and the effort required to keep these instruments collecting data.
Read the full article at NOAA Ocean Acidification Program