Questions Submitted by Spearman Elementary School
How does wind make water into waves?
How does wind make water into waves ? That's a great question. People spend their whole lives trying to answer that. The easy answer is, that the wind pushes the waves and can make them bigger or smaller that way. But how does the wind make waves on perfectly flat water ? It's kind of like rubbing one thing over another, and the friction gets the waves started. - Paquita
Are you using satellites to help you track the clouds and weather for this project?
We use satellites for forecasting the weather for the next day, and then deciding the aircraft flight plans. We will also use satellite data later, to make more sense of the data we are collecting now. For example, to help answer the question, how thick do clouds need to appear on satellite imagery when they are raining ? The answer to that, is the kind of thing that goes into global climate models. - Paquita
Does your weight change on board the ship?
Does your weight change on board the ship ? I've never thought about that before, but I suppose it does. When the ship is changing its up-down speed or direction the most (not necessarily when it is moving up-down the fastest), your weight will change. If the ship is moving down but decreasing how fast it is moving down, you will weigh more, and when it is moving down faster and faster, you will weigh less. That means that skydivers are sort of weightless- until they hit the ground. - Paquita
What is the smallest kind of instrument you are using and what does it do?
What is the smallest instrument ? I'm guessing that would be either the solar or infrared (=heat) radiometer. All they are are domes about 4 inches across, that measure how much sunlight, or infrared radiation is hitting them. I've attached a picture of them from another experiment we had last summer. There's a bird sitting right on top of one ! The radiometer is on the grill at the top of the roost, facing the camera. The data had led us to conclude that global warming was seriously increasing..... (just kidding). - Paquita
Since there are so many boats that come through the area around the islands, does the air pollution and oil in the water have an effect on the clouds and precipitation?
Another great question from Spearman. Another major source of air pollution is islands - dust, and smoke from fires, for example. Most of the time, we were upwind of the islands for that reason. One day though, we went downwind of an island. The amount of aerosol (=very small particles) we counted did go up. It will be interesting to see if the cloud particles are smaller there (because there are more cloud nuclei, and the cloud water gets spread out more over the available nuclei), or if the aerosol help alter how clouds rain. That last one is hard to determine with just one day's worth of data, but modeling studies with and without aerosol for that day will help us form an opinion.
What is a mammatus cloud? What does it look like? Why would it form after the rain?
A mammatus cloud happens when you have a downdraft of moist air that turns into a cloud - so it looks like an upside-down cloud. You need a lot of motion in the atmosphere to see one, and a lot of moisture, so they are always connected with raining clouds. We didn't see them in the Caribbean because the clouds we were studying weren't big and active enough.
What will the Seward Johnson do after this trip is finished?
The Seward Johnson does an awful lot of cruises. They are doing another one about 5 or 7 days after RICO, I believe it is an oceanography cruise that is studying the currents off the coast of Florida.
How does lying horizontally keep you from getting seasick?
That's a really great question to ask an ear doctor! All I know is that seasickness has to do with the inner-ears ability to adjust to motion. For many people lying down helps this adjustment take place.
Also, your stomach is just unhappy (for me it was like that queasy feeling you get with the flu). All anyone wants to do when they have the flu is to lay down, right? - Judy
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