Having completed 6 months of work on a Phase I SBIR in February, Sunburst Sensors submitted its proposal to continue work on: "The pHyter and Other Oceanographic Tools for Citizen Science and STEM Education." We were notified mid-summer that we were one of twelve companies to receive Phase II funding and are excited to continue development of the pHyter and other instruments, working with collaborators from around the country. Starting in August of 2022, this grant will fund two years of work at approximately $500K to:
|
|
|
|
Here is a press release from NOAA announcing Phase II SBIR winners: NOAA invests $5.9M in small businesses to advance innovative technologies. (will open in new window/tab) |
|
On September 9, 2020, Sunburst Sensors gave a presentation entitled "Sunburst Sensors: Oceanographic Instrumentation from Montana to Mauritius" discussing our use of SBIR and other grant funding mechanisms in growing our business. The presentation is archived here. You may want to skip over the video (4 minutes) towards the end as it is pretty choppy. If you're interested it can be found directly on YouTube at the link here.
The NOAA Central Library Seminar program provides an educational forum (hosting over 1,000 presentations since 1992) for the presentation of ideas, research updates and share news in support of NOAA's mission: to understand and predict changes in climate, weather, oceans and coasts; to share that knowledge and information with others; and to conserve and manage coastal and marine ecosystems and resources.
Researchers have used the SuperCO2, SAMI-CO2 and SAMI-pH along with other instruments to learn more about the changing carbon cycle in the arctic.
From the linked article:
Sea surface pCO2 variability in the Arctic Ocean is intertwined with biological production, ice formation, and melting (where CO2 is concentrated or diluted, respectively), heating and other processes, all of which are no longer in steady state. Sparse long-term data have limited our ability to assess variability of sea surface pCO2 that is related to these changes.
(The authors) have been measuring pCO2 in the Canada Basin of the Arctic Ocean since 2012 to help address this shortcoming. Cruises have taken place on the Canadian icebreaker, the CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent as part of the Beaufort Gyre Observing System and Joint Ocean Ice Study (BGOS/JOIS) programs through Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Woods Hole, Massachusetts) and the Institute of Ocean Sciences (Sidney, British Columbia), respectively. These cruises, conducted since 2002 with support from NSF, have focused on the hydrography and biogeochemistry of the western Arctic Ocean.
For full article, click here: Arcus: The Changing Carbon Cycle of the Arctic (this will open article in a new tab or window)
SAMI-CO2 mounted to OOI float. Picture credit: OOI
The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) uses both SAMI-CO2 and SAMI-pH instruments at many of its observatories to help monitor the marine carbonate system. OOI recently published an article: Altered Carbon: Improvement to CO2 Measurements Enhance OOI Data Quality (Link will open new tab/window)
Sunburst Sensors was invited to participate in the 2nd Integrated Carbon Observation System Ocean Thematic Centre (ICOS OTC) sensor workshop at GEOMAR in Kiel, Germany in November 2019. The purpose of the 3-day workshop was to train ICOS members in best practices for CO2 measurements, as well as instrument maintenance and data handling. Reggie Spaulding presented SAMI-CO2 best practices, maintenance, and quality control. Approximately 30 members from across Europe attended.
ICOS will sponsor a pCO2 measurement intercomparison exercise in 2021 at the Flanders Marine Institute in Belgium. The exercise will focus on underway instruments. We plan to test our SuperCO2 and our AFT-CO2 instruments.
