OceanoScientific Veolia® Programme
Beyond the sports aspect, right from the start, the organizers of the SolOceans designed the Veolia Oceans® to be OceanoScientific Veolia® yachts, so that every euro invested in the SolOceans could be used for the scientific exploration of our Earth, with a view to its preservation and to serve humanity.
Scientists from all over the world create models of climate change to precisely determine the causes and consequences of global warming, however, they really lack valid scientific data. Satellite observation is very useful in this area, since it means that all oceans can be almost continuously monitored in a synoptic manner, nevertheless, the number of parameters that can be accessed in this way remains limited. In order to validate the accuracy of the instruments that equip satellites, the data obtained from them must be compared with measurements taken on site. However, information on site is either very unevenly distributed with, very few measurements in the southern hemisphere (40% of the SolOceans course), too few, or not regular enough.
Within this context, every year starting from 2009, a fleet of completely identical yachts, the Veolia Oceans®, sailing round little explored areas south of the three continental capes, where our climatic future is at stake, could indeed serve humanity to better understand our Earth and thereby protect it.
The design and construction of the Veolia Oceans®'s hull, keel and mast instruments will include various scientific captors. This measurement equipment will be perfected by specialized firms. The marine adaptation of the scientific equipment will be carried out with the aid of the engineers involved, depending on their fields of research. The data acquisition will be fully automated so that there will be no need for the solo-sailor to intervene on on-board equipment during the race. The acquired scientific data will be digitized and transmitted by satellite to the OceanoScientific® international media centre that will be installed alongside the standard Media centre.
In collaboration the LOCEAN laboratory (Laboratoire d'Océanographie et du Climat : Expérimentation et Approches Numériques - Oceanographic and Climate Laboratory: Experiments and Digital Approaches) and IFREMER (Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la MER - French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea), who will be helping the OceanoScientific Veolia® Programme team who initiated this approach, seven surface studies have been identified that can be handled aboard the Veolia Oceans®, subject to preliminary tests: True wind - Strength and Direction; Humidity of air; Atmospheric Pressure; Temperature - Air and Sea; Seawater salinity; Partial Carbon Dioxyde Pressure (pCO2) of seawater; Oxygen content dissolved in seawater.
In addition to this equipment which will require no intervention by the solo-sailor during the race, the transom of the Veolia Oceans® will be fitted with scientific beacon launching equipment. In this instance, the sailor's help will be required to trigger the launch of the beacon. This thirty-centimetre nose cone-shaped beacon is the size of a bottle. It is used by scientists in either a Temperature + Pressure (Xbt) mode, or a Temperature + Pressure + Salinity (Xctd) mode.
Once released by the solo-sailor, using a launch system located on the transom of each of the Veolia Oceans®, these beacons will sink to a depth of 1,500 metres. The information collected by them will be transmitted by satellite.
These beacons will be powered in three particular events and always by request of the scientists who will run the OceanoScientific® Veolia Operation from the SolOceans international media centre. These are to study the water column at particularly interesting places and areas with little data such as the subantarctic convergence area; to calibrate and validate drifting or moored scientific floats; to complete the data supplied by the Veolia Oceans®, which will be processed ashore almost in real time through the international scientific media center.
The European CORIOLIS programme will provide world visibility of data collected through the Veolia OceanoScientific® Campaign, through its data centre.
Initiated by the CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales - National Space Study Centre), CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - National Scientific Research Centre), IFREMER, IPEV (Institut Polaire Français Paul-Emile Victor - French Paul-Emile Victor Polar Institute), IRD (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - Research and Development Institute), Méteo France (Weather board) and SHOM (Service Hydrographique et Océanographique de la Marine - Marine Hydrographic and Oceanographic Department), the Coriolis project will contribute to the creation of an operational system for the forecasting of oceanic currents and climatic change.
As a partner of the Veolia OceanoScientific® Campaign run during the SolOceans, the Coriolis project will undertake to distribute the data to all scientific projects requesting such information, to world forecasting models of oceanic circulation as well as to the European SMOS (Soil Moisture & Ocean Salinity) satellite calibration / validation centres.
One of the greatest opportunities provided by the Veolia OceanoScientific® Campaign is that it starts practically at the same time as the European SMOS satellite programme and its American namesake, AQUARIUS. The SMOS satellite will map soil moisture and ocean salinity on a planetary scale. Through ocean salinity and its changes one can monitor the main fronts associated with the largest sailing currents. They mainly provide access to the fresh water balance which plays an essential role in the exchanges occurring between the ocean and the atmosphere. These are the exchanges that govern climatic change and global warming. Salinity may also help evaluate the role of oceans in the carbon cycle.
The launch of SMOS has been announced for 2007 and it will be operational in 2009. That of AQUARIUS has been announced for 2009 and it will be operational in 2011. We are talking about the first salinity measurments ever to be made from a satellite. They will have to be calibrated on the basis of on-site reference measurements and will then be the subject of extensive validation, always in comparison with on-site recordings.
Fabienne Gaillard, researcher at the Laboratoire de Physique des Océans (Ocean Physics Laboratory) and a Coriolis project scientist confirms the following: "The scientific data collected by Veolia Oceans® from the OceanoScientific Veolia® Programme will represent a significant contribution to the already existing observation network. This approach will open the way to the participation of new communities in the observation of our Earth."
