The Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies

Hi! My name is Carlos Hernandez Santiago. This summer I worked at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) in the Ocean Climate Stations (OCS) group with my mentors Meghan Cronin and Dongxiao Zhang. I also worked closely with Kee Onn Fong, a postdoctoral scholar in the OCS group, and Jim Edson, our collaborator at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. We investigated directly measured air-sea fluxes of momentum and heat from a new, unpublished dataset at OCS’ Papa buoy in the Northeast Pacific (50°N 145°W).

In 2025, Papa was enhanced with a Direct Covariance Flux System (DCFS), which measured momentum and heat fluxes by time-averaging instantaneous changes in winds and temperature. I spent my first few weeks processing data into my MATLAB workspace and understanding the engineering of the instrument from which my data came from in order to find a filter to differentiate ‘real’ and contaminated data. Later on, I characterized the sea state during the 2025 deployment of Papa, and compared these measurements to other independent measurements. Finally, I compared the directly measured fluxes to estimated fluxes from the COARE 3.5 algorithm, which I computed with meteorological variables during the same time period. I evaluated the differences and found that COARE 3.5 underestimates momentum fluxes in comparison to directly measured momentum fluxes during higher energetic periods (increases in wind speed and significant wave height) and storm events.

There were a lot of learning curves throughout this process, such as a delay in acquiring raw high-frequency data and noisy heat flux data, which ultimately restricted me from further analyzing this variable.

I am incredibly grateful for my time in Seattle. I forged great relationships with my mentors, the OCS group as a whole, and fellow interns. I had some important career and academic discussions along the way, which helped me learn a lot about myself and what my future could look like.

Project Introduction

Research Poster