Ocean observations

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The following are considered ocean essential climate variables (ECVs) by the Ocean Observations Panel for Climate (OOPC) [1] that are currently feasible with current observational systems .

Contents

Ocean climate variables

Atmosphere surface

Ocean surface

Ocean subsurface

Ocean observation sources

Satellite

There is a composite network of satellites that generate observations. These include:

TypeVariables observedResponsible organizations
Infrared (IR)SST, sea iceCEOS, IGOS, CGMS
AMSR-class microwaveSST, wind speed, sea iceCEOS, IGOS, CGMS
Surface vector wind (two wide-swath scatterometers desired)surface vector wind, sea iceCEOS, IGOS, CGMS
Ocean colorchlorophyll concentration (biomass of phytoplankton)IOCCG
high-precision altimetrysea-level anomaly from steady stateCEOS, IGOS, CGMS
low-precision altimetrysea levelCEOS, IGOS, CGMS
Synthetic aperture radarsea ice, sea stateCEOS, IGOS, CGMS

In situ

There is a composite network of in situ observations. These include:

TypeVariables observedResponsible organizations
Global surface drifting buoy array with 5 degree resolution (1250 total)SST, SLP, Current (based on position change)JCOMM Data Buoy Cooperation Panel (DBCP)
Global tropical moored buoy network (about 120 moorings)typically SST and surface vector wind, but can also include SLP, current, air-sea flux variablesJCOMM DBCP Tropical Moored Buoy Implementation Panel (TIP)
Volunteer Observing Ship (VOS) fleetall feasible surface ECVs JCOMM Ship Observations Team (SOT)
VOSClimall feasible surface ECVs plus extensive ship metadataJCOMM Ship Observations Team (SOT)
Global referencing mooring network (29 moorings)all feasible surface ECVs OceanSITES
GLOSS core sea-level network, plus regional/national networkssea levelJCOMM GLOSS
Carbon VOS pCO2, SST, SSSIOCCP
Sea ice buoyssea iceJCOMM DBCP IABP and IPAB

Subsurface

There is a composite network of subsurface observations. These include:

TypeVariables observedResponsible organizations
Repeat XBT (Expendable bathythermograph) line network (41 lines)TemperatureJCOMM Ship Observations Team (SOT)
Global tropical moored buoy network (~120 moorings)Temperature, salinity, current, other feasible autonomously observable ECVsJCOMM DBCP Tropical Moored Buoy Implementation Panel (TIP)
Reference mooring network (29 moorings)all autonomously observable ECVsOceanSITES
Sustained and repeated ship-based hydrography networkAll feasible ECVs, including those that depend on obtaining water samplesIOCCP, CLIVAR, other national efforts
Argo (oceanography) networktemperature, salinity, currentArgo
Critical current and transport monitoringtemperature, heat, freshwater, carbon transports, massCLIVAR, IOCCP, OceanSITES
Regional and global synthesis programmesinferred currents, transports gridded fields of all ECVsGODAE, CLIVAR, other national efforts
Cabled ocean observatories audio, backscatter, chlorophyll, CO2, conductivity, currents, density, Eh, gravity, iron, irradiance, methane, nitrate, oxygen, pressure, salinity, seismic, sigma-T, sound velocity, temperature, turbidity, video Ocean Networks Canada, Monterey Accelerated Research System, Ocean Observatories Initiative, ALOHA, ESONET (European Seas Observatory NETwork), Dense Oceanfloor Network System for Earthquakes and Tsunamis (DONET), Fixed-Point Open Ocean Observatories (FixO3).

Accuracy of measurements

The quality of in situ measurements is non-uniform across space, time and platforms. Different platforms employ a large variety of sensors, which operate in a wide range of often hostile environments and use different measurement protocols. Occasionally, buoys are left unattended for extended periods of time, while ships may involve a certain amount of the human-related impacts in data collection and transmission. [2] Therefore, quality control is necessary before in situ data can be further used in scientific research or other applications. This is an example of quality control and monitoring of sea surface temperatures measured by ships and buoys, the iQuam system developed at NOAA/NESDIS/STAR, [3] where statistics show the quality of in situ measurements of sea surface temperatures.

One of the problems facing real-time ocean observatories is the ability to provide a fast and accurate assessment of the data quality. Ocean Networks Canada is in the process of implementing real-time quality control on incoming data. For scalar data, the aim is to meet the guidelines of the Quality Assurance of Real Time Oceanographic Data (QARTOD) group. QARTOD is a US organization tasked with identifying issues involved with incoming real-time data from the U.S Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS). A large portion of their agenda is to create guidelines for how the quality of real-time data is to be determined and reported to the scientific community. Real-time data quality testing at Ocean Networks Canada includes tests designed to catch instrument failures and major spikes or data dropouts before the data is made available to the user. Real-time quality tests include meeting instrument manufacturer's standards and overall observatory/site ranges determined from previous data. Due to the positioning of some instrument platforms in highly productive areas, we have also designed dual-sensor tests e.g. for some conductivity sensors. The quality control testing is split into 3 separate categories. The first category is in real-time and tests the data before the data are parsed into the database. The second category is delayed-mode testing where archived data are subject to testing after a certain period of time. The third category is manual quality control by an Ocean Networks Canada data expert.

Historical data available

OceanSITES [4] manages a set of links to various sources of available ocean data, including: the Hawaiian Ocean Timeseries (HOT), [5] the JAMSTEC Kuroshio Extension Observatory (JKEO), [6] Line W monitoring the North Atlantic's deep western boundary current, [7] and others.

This site includes links to the ARGO Float Data, The Data Library and Archives (DLA), the Falmouth Monthly Climate Reports, Martha's Vineyard Coastal Observatory, the Multibeam Archive, the Seafloor Data and Observation Visualization Environment (SeaDOVE): A Web-served GIS Database of Multi-scalar Seafloor Data, Seafloor Sediments Data Collection, the Upper Ocean Mooring Data Archive, the U.S. GLOBEC Data System, U.S. JGOFS Data System, and the WHOI Ship Data-Grabber System.

There are a variety of data sets in a data library listed at Columbia University: [8]

This library includes:

In situ observations spanning from the early 1700s to present are available from the International Comprehensive Ocean Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS).

This data set includes observations of a number of the surface ocean and atmospheric variables from ships, moored and drifting buoys and C-MAN stations.

In 2006, Ocean Networks Canada began collecting high-resolution in-situ measurements from the seafloor in Saanich Inlet, near Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. [9] Monitoring sites were later extended to the Strait of Georgia [10] and 5 locations off the West coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. All historical measurements are freely available via Ocean Networks Canada's data portal, Oceans 2.0. [11]

Future developments

Areas requiring research and development [12]

The future of oceanic observation systems:

Organizations

See also

Related Research Articles

The National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) was one of the national environmental data centers operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The main NODC facility was located in Silver Spring, Maryland, and was made up of five divisions. The NODC also had field offices collocated with major government or academic oceanographic laboratories in Stennis Space Center, MS; Miami, FL; La Jolla, San Diego, California; Seattle, WA; Austin, Texas; Charleston, South Carolina; Norfolk, Virginia; and Honolulu, Hawaii. In 2015, NODC was merged with the National Climatic Data Center and the National Geophysical Data Center into the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bathymetry</span> Study of underwater depth of lake or ocean floors

Bathymetry is the study of underwater depth of ocean floors, lake floors, or river floors. In other words, bathymetry is the underwater equivalent to hypsometry or topography. The first recorded evidence of water depth measurements are from Ancient Egypt over 3000 years ago. Bathymetric charts, are typically produced to support safety of surface or sub-surface navigation, and usually show seafloor relief or terrain as contour lines and selected depths (soundings), and typically also provide surface navigational information. Bathymetric maps may also use a Digital Terrain Model and artificial illumination techniques to illustrate the depths being portrayed. The global bathymetry is sometimes combined with topography data to yield a global relief model. Paleobathymetry is the study of past underwater depths.

The World Ocean Database Project, or WOD, is a project established by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC). The project leader is Sydney Levitus who is director of the International Council for Science (ICSU) World Data Center (WDC) for Oceanography, Silver Spring. In recognition of the success of the IOC Global Oceanographic Data Archaeological and Rescue Project, a proposal was presented at the 16th Session of the Committee on International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE), which was held in Lisbon, Portugal, in October–November 2000, to establish the World Ocean Database Project. This project is intended to stimulate international exchange of modern oceanographic data and encourage the development of regional oceanographic databases as well as the implementation of regional quality control procedures. This new Project was endorsed by the IODE at the conclusion of the Portugal meeting, and the IOC subsequently approved this project in June 2001.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Argo (oceanography)</span> International oceanographic observation program

Argo is an international programme for researching the ocean. It uses profiling floats to observe temperature, salinity and currents. Recently it has observed bio-optical properties in the Earth's oceans. It has been operating since the early 2000s. The real-time data it provides support climate and oceanographic research. A special research interest is to quantify the ocean heat content (OHC). The Argo fleet consists of almost 4000 drifting "Argo floats" deployed worldwide. Each float weighs 20–30 kg. In most cases probes drift at a depth of 1000 metres. Experts call this the parking depth. Every 10 days, by changing their buoyancy, they dive to a depth of 2000 metres and then move to the sea-surface. As they move they measure conductivity and temperature profiles as well as pressure. Scientists calculate salinity and density from these measurements. Seawater density is important in determining large-scale motions in the ocean.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis</span> Component of an enhanced tsunami warning system

Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) is a component of an enhanced tsunami warning system.

The Group for High Resolution SST (GHRSST) is a follow on activity form the Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (GODAE) high-resolution sea surface temperature pilot project. It provides a global high-resolution (<10 km) data products to the operational oceanographic, meteorological, climate and general scientific community, in real time and delayed mode.

The World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) was a component of the international World Climate Research Program, and aimed to establish the role of the World Ocean in the Earth's climate system. WOCE's field phase ran between 1990 and 1998, and was followed by an analysis and modeling phase that ran until 2002. When the WOCE was conceived, there were three main motivations for its creation. The first of these is the inadequate coverage of the World Ocean, specifically in the Southern Hemisphere. Data was also much more sparse during the winter months than the summer months, and there was—and still is to some extent—a critical need for data covering all seasons. Secondly, the data that did exist was not initially collected for studying ocean circulation and was not well suited for model comparison. Lastly, there were concerns involving the accuracy and reliability of some measurements. The WOCE was meant to address these problems by providing new data collected in ways designed to "meet the needs of global circulation models for climate prediction."

TAMDAR is a weather monitoring system that consists of an in situ atmospheric sensor mounted on commercial aircraft for data gathering. It collects information similar to that collected by radiosondes carried aloft by weather balloons. It was developed by AirDat LLC, which was acquired by Panasonic Avionics Corporation in April 2013 and was operated until October 2018 under the name Panasonic Weather Solutions. It is now owned by FLYHT Aerospace Solutions Ltd.

The NEPTUNE Ocean Observatory project is part of Ocean Networks Canada which is a University of Victoria initiative. NEPTUNE is the world's first regional-scale underwater ocean observatory that plugs directly into the Internet. NEPTUNE is the largest installation on the Ocean Networks Canada network of ocean observatories. Since December 2009, it has allowed people to "surf" the seafloor while ocean scientists run deep-water experiments from labs and universities around the world. Along with its sister project, VENUS, NEPTUNE offers a unique approach to ocean science. Traditionally, ocean scientists have relied on infrequent ship cruises or space-based satellites to carry out their research, while the NEPTUNE project uses a remotely operated crawler.

The World Ocean Atlas (WOA) is a data product of the Ocean Climate Laboratory of the National Oceanographic Data Center (U.S.). The WOA consists of a climatology of fields of in situ ocean properties for the World Ocean. It was first produced in 1994, with later editions at roughly four year intervals in 1998, 2001, 2005, 2009, 2013, 2018, and 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ocean color</span> Explanation of the color of oceans and ocean color remote sensing

Ocean color is the branch of ocean optics that specifically studies the color of the water and information that can be gained from looking at variations in color. The color of the ocean, while mainly blue, actually varies from blue to green or even yellow, brown or red in some cases. This field of study developed alongside water remote sensing, so it is focused mainly on how color is measured by instruments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ocean Observatories Initiative</span> Network of ocean observatories

The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) is a National Science Foundation (NSF) Major Research Facility composed of a network of science-driven ocean observing platforms and sensors in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This networked infrastructure measures physical, chemical, geological, and biological variables from the seafloor to the sea surface and overlying atmosphere, providing an integrated data collection system on coastal, regional and global scales. OOI's goal is to deliver data and data products for a 25-year-plus time period, enabling a better understanding of ocean environments and critical ocean issues.

The Hawaii Ocean Time-series (HOT) program is a long-term oceanographic study based at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. In 2015, the American Society for Microbiology designated the HOT Program's field site Station ALOHA a "Milestone in Microbiology", for playing "a key role in defining the discipline of microbial oceanography and educating the public about the vital role of marine microbes in global ecosystems."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suomi NPP</span>

The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership, previously known as the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (NPP) and NPP-Bridge, is a weather satellite operated by the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It was launched in 2011 and is currently in operation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cabled observatory</span> Seabed oceanographic research platforms connected to the surface by undersea cables

A cabled observatory is a seabed oceanographic research platform connected to land by cables that provide power and communication. Observatories are outfitted with a multitude of scientific instruments that can collect many kinds of data from the seafloor and water column. By removing the limitations of undersea power sources and sonar or RF communications, cabled observatories allow persistent study of underwater phenomena. Data from these instruments is relayed to a land station and data networks, such as Ocean Networks Canada, in real time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CORA dataset</span> Oceanographic temperature and salinity dataset

CORA is a global oceanographic temperature and salinity dataset produced and maintained by the French institute IFREMER. Most of those data are real-time data coming from different types of platforms such as research vessels, profilers, underwater gliders, drifting buoys, moored buoys, sea mammals and ships of opportunity.

The Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) project is a major international effort that instrumented the entire tropical Pacific Ocean with approximately 70 deep ocean moorings. The development of the TAO array in 1985 was motivated by the 1982-1983 El Niño event and ultimately designed for the study of year-to-year climate variations related to El Niño and the Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Led by the TAO Project Office of the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL), the full array of 70 moorings was completed in 1994.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fixed-point ocean observatory</span> Cable-anchored system of ocean sensors

A fixed-point ocean observatory is an ocean observing autonomous system of automatic sensors and samplers that continuously gathers data from deep sea, water column and lower atmosphere, and transmits the data to shore in real or near real-time.

The Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM) project is a large scale National Science Foundation funded research project based at Princeton University that started in September 2014. The project aims to increase the understanding of the Southern Ocean and the role it plays in factors such as climate, as well as educate new scientists with oceanic observation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NOAA-8</span> Weather satellite

NOAA-8, known as NOAA-E before launch, was an American weather satellite operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for use in the National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service (NESDIS). It was first of the Advanced TIROS-N series of satellites. The satellite design provided an economical and stable Sun-synchronous platform for advanced operational instruments to measure the atmosphere of Earth, its surface and cloud cover, and the near-space environment.

References

  1. ↑ "OOPC". Ioc-goos-oopc.org. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  2. ↑ Kent, Elizabeth C.; Challenor, Peter G.; Taylor, Peter K. (1999). "A Statistical Determination of the Random Observational Errors Present in Voluntary Observing Ships Meteorological Reports". Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology. 16 (7): 905–914. Bibcode:1999JAtOT..16..905K. doi:10.1175/1520-0426(1999)016<0905:ASDOTR>2.0.CO;2.
  3. ↑ "iQuam - in situ SST quality monitoring". Star.nesdis.noaa.gov. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  4. ↑ [ dead link ]
  5. ↑ "The Physical Oceanography Component of Hawaii Ocean Timeseries (HOT/PO)". Soest.hawaii.edu. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  6. ↑ "JKEO Data Web Site". Jamstec.go.jp. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  7. ↑ "Line W - Monitoring the North Atlantic Ocean's Deep Western Boundary Currents". Whoi.edu. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  8. ↑ "dataset: SOURCES". Iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  9. ↑ "VENUS Celebrates 6 Years of Streaming Data". Oceannetworks.ca. Retrieved 3 November 2015.
  10. ↑ "Central Strait of Georgia". Oceannetworks.ca. Ocean Networks Canada. Archived from the original on 2015-11-01. Retrieved 2015-11-03.
  11. ↑ Jenkyns, Reyna (20 September 2010). "NEPTUNE Canada: Data integrity from the seafloor to your (Virtual) Door". Oceans 2010. pp. 1–7. doi:10.1109/OCEANS.2010.5664290. ISBN   978-1-4244-4332-1. S2CID   27181386.
  12. ↑ Archived July 20, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  13. ↑ "Flight Across the Atlantic - Scarlet Knight". Rucool.marine.rutgers.edu. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  14. ↑ "Home". Ioc-goos.org. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  15. ↑ "World Meteorological Organization". Wmo.int. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  16. ↑ "Home | Ocean.US — the National Office for Integrated and Sustained Ocean Observations". Archived from the original on August 18, 2008. Retrieved September 4, 2008.
  17. ↑ "Argo : official website". Argo.net. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  18. ↑ "Argo - part of the integrated global observation strategy". Argo.ucsd.edu. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  19. ↑ "Observing the ocean". Godae.org. Archived from the original on 2012-02-16. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  20. ↑ "Ocean Networks Canada". oceannetworks.ca. Retrieved 2 November 2015.
  21. ↑ Archived June 29, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  22. ↑ "Consortium for Ocean Leadership". Archived from the original on 2009-04-26. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
  23. ↑ FixO3, official webpage
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