One of the biggest challenges of humanity today is the problem of climate change on the planet, its consequences and possible ways to adapt to the new reality. The ocean is the main engine of weather and climate and without marine research and data collection, it is impossible to solve these ambitious tasks. However the ocean is the least-explored part of our planet, and the efforts of individuals can be very helpful.
One can say that there are non-ship-bound systems such as the broadscale global array of more than 3000 drifting temperature and salinity profiling floats in the ocean, known as Argo. However, they deliver data sets that are very limited in the number of parameters and
were designed for subsurface operation, i.e. they do not collect real sea surface data.
Our mission consists of two major parts:
- Collecting low-cost high-quality oceanographic CTD data using a sailboat, which has Near-Zero emission; and transferring these data to the world ocean databases.
- Developing a methodology for cruising sailors on how to use CTD systems to collect data in the ocean, provide QC of data, and transfer these data to the world ocean databases.
This will give the worldwide flotilla of cruising sailors a feeling of real accomplishment and raise a citizen science to a new level of oceanographic data collection. This is very important nowadays, when the science community desperately needs more ocean data, especially from remote and coastal areas, which are not covered by Argo-floats, for a better understanding of the role of the Oceans in Climate change.
