COLLOQUIUM Department of Computer Science and Engineering University of South Carolina Subrahmanyam Bulusu Marine Science Program & Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences University of South Carolina Date: April 25, 2013 Time: 1400-1500 (2:00pm-3:00pm) Place: Swearingen 1A03 (Faculty Lounge) Abstract Salt plays an important role in our daily lives. True, salt makes our food tastier, but perhaps its most significant role is as an ingredient in Earth's climate. A measurement of sea surface salinity, or the concentration of salt at the ocean’s surface, gives us vital information on global ocean circulation and how fresh water moves between the ocean and other reservoirs through the water cycle, the process by which water circulates from the ocean, to the atmosphere, to the land, and then back to the ocean. In the past, researchers assumed that salinity did not play a significant role in the dynamics and thermodynamics of the oceans because it has little variation ind the global oceans. Salinity and temperature together affect the density of seawater, and its circulation. Though temperature has been measured extensively, both in-situ and remotely sensed, salinity observations have been lacking. Regular in-situ salinity measurements have been restricted to just a small fraction of the oceans. Most of these measurements have been by ships-of-opportunity along major shipping lines. Due to these limited measurements, basin-scale processes and variability studies that require the incorporation of salinity data have been a challenge. The launch of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite in November 2009, and the United State’s NASA and Space Agency of Argentina’s (CONAE; Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales) Aquarius/ Satellite de Aplicaciones Cientificas (SAC)-D satellite mission in June 2011, opened a new era for providing global oceans salinity observations, which will improve our understanding of salinity variability and dynamics. SMOS has been designed to observe soil moisture over the Earth's landmasses and salinity over the oceans. Aquarius/SAC-D science objectives seek to provide high quality salinity data that will help enhance the study of ocean circulation, the global hydrological cycle, climate variability, land processes, land use, soil moisture, natural hazards, health applications, cryosphere, etc. Dr. Subrahmanyam (Subra) Bulusu is an Associate Professor, with appointments in the Marine Science Program and the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of South Carolina. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Southampton, UK in 1998, did two-year postdoctoral work at the Florida State University, and then became Research faculty at FSU until 2005. He joined USC in August, 2005 as an Assistant Professor and became an Associate Professor with tenure in 2009. Since his arrival at USC, he has established a state-of-the art Satellite Oceanography Laboratory in the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences. Last year he was appointed as the USC campus Director for the NASA/SC Space Grant Consortium. He was awarded the prestigious Breakthrough Rising Star designation at USC in 2013.