The southern ocean is now being asked to keep its own receipts
the southern ocean is now being asked to keep its own receipts: a usv fleet sails from hobart every quarter for five years to measure co2 uptake around antarctica, an mlp network maps surface co2 pressure at one degree grids from float data, and neural nets turn underwater images into carbon flux estimates.
the cold sea now tallies its own intake.
Context
CSIRO, Lamont-Doherty and Saildrone reported on Sep 24 that the first of a new fleet of uncrewed surface vehicles set off from Hobart for the COCO2 project, led by NOAA and Columbia University, to measure carbon in the Southern Ocean over five years. Published work on reconstructing Southern Ocean pCO2 uses feedforward neural networks, including a Springer chapter.
Neural-network and optical work estimates particulate organic carbon flux from underwater images such as those from Video Plankton Recorders and BGC Argo floats.
The Hobart USV fleet and the five year COCO2 mission match the sources. The 'every quarter' schedule, 'one degree grids from float data' and the exact image-to-flux network were not seen in the excerpts read, so they are unsupported here, not refuted.
'The cold sea now tallies its own intake' is the author's opinion.
Related work
- CSIRO: ocean drones set to brave the Southern Ocean ↗The fleet launch.
- Lamont: robot sailboats will spend five years measuring carbon ↗The COCO2 project.
- Reconstruction of pCO2 in the Southern Ocean with feedforward networks ↗Neural pCO2 maps.
Watch next
- Read the COCO2 page for the sailing schedule.
Sources
- CSIRO, Sep 24, 2026csiro.au
- Lamont-Doherty, Sep 24, 2026lamont.columbia.edu
- Saildrone, Sep 24, 2026saildrone.com
Provenance
The note above is reproduced unedited from the original post, first published on Threads on 3 October 2026 at 12:55 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
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