September 9, 2026 — A quartet of uncrewed surface vehicles are navigating 1,500 miles to the center of a historic El Niño gathering strength in the eastern Pacific, on a four-month mission to collect data on the warm-water impulse altering global weather patterns.
Two orange Saildrone Explorer 23′ USVs sailed Aug. 21 from Honolulu, carrying meteorological and oceanographic sensors and rendezvousing with two other Saildrones on a 6,000-mile round-trip mission for NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) according to a summary from the agency.
“A monumental El Niño is knocking at the door,” said Michael McPhaden, former PMEL senior scientist now working with NOAA’s Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies (CICOES). “We’re going to take a closer look.”
The USVs will steer courses through the Tropical Pacific Observing System, a multi-national array of data-collecting moored surface buoys that provide continuous, real-time hourly tracking of surface winds, air temperature, humidity, and upper-ocean temperature down to 1,640’. Argo floats collect ocean profiles down to 1.24 miles every 10 days.
Distributed throughout the array are drifting buoys measuring sea surface temperature and currents. Overhead, satellites track the drifters and capture surface observations across wide areas.