Tag: Physical Oceanography

A large red and black CTD sits on the deck of the WBTS cruise. 2020

Scientists at AOML Awarded Ocean Observing Team Award for Western Boundary Time Series Project

NOAA’s Western Boundary Time Series (WBTS) project, alongside partner projects RAPID and MOCHA, have been awarded the inaugural “Ocean Observing Team Award” by The Oceanography Society (TOS). This award recognizes innovation and excellence in sustained ocean observing for scientific and practical applications. The WBTS/RAPID/MOCHA team is recognized for significantly improving our understanding of Atlantic circulation through the breakthrough design of a basin-wide observing system using endpoint measurements to measure the variability of the overturning circulation across wide areas of the ocean. This design provided continuous, cost-effective measurements that led to a transformation in ocean observing and advances in scientific knowledge.

Read Full Article
Screenshot of the Global Drifter Program's drifter array map.

The Global Drifter Program Launches a New Interactive Map Tool

The Global Drifter Program’s (GDP) Drifter Data Assembly Center (DAC) at AOML has launched a new interactive map of the global drifter array. This new tool features the ability to zoom and scroll, hover the cursor over drifters to get their identification numbers, and click to see data and metadata including deployment information, manufacturer, and drifter type in an ID card that can be viewed as a high-resolution image with an additional click.

Read Full Article

Hurricane Gliders Return Home from 2020 Season

NOAA’s hurricane gliders are returning home after a successful journey during the 2020 hurricane season. These gliders were deployed off the coasts of Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Gulf of America, and the eastern U.S. to collect data for scientists to use to improve the accuracy of hurricane forecast models.

Read Full Article
Blue and red dots on a map indicate locations of Argo float deployments. Land is shown in green.

The Argo Program: Two Decades of Ocean Observations

In a recent article published in Frontiers in Marine Science, the history of the Argo program is examined and discussed. The Argo program began in 1998 when a team of international scientists, known as the “Argo Science Team,” proposed the idea for a global array of autonomous floats to obtain temperature and salinity measurements of the upper 2,000 meters of the global ocean. The new array of floats, called Argo, would go on to be endorsed as a pilot program of the Global Ocean Observing System and be used to fill in the large data gaps in ocean observations.

Read Full Article
Satellite image of the surface temperature of the Earth shows a dark red patch in the Pacific indicating an El Nino event.

Testing the Trade Wind Charging Mechanism and Its Influence on ENSO Variability

In a new article published in the Journal of Climate, scientists at AOML and the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Science, with collaborators at Boston University, Texas A&M, and North Carolina State University, document the role of ocean dynamics in linking Pacific atmospheric variability to El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event generation. The results of the study could be used as a potential predictor of ENSO events up to a year in advance.

Read Full Article
Meridional Overturning Circulation schematic

First-ever Daily Time Series Reveals the Strength of the Deep Ocean Circulation in the South Atlantic

In a recent study published in the journal Science Advances, oceanographers at AOML and the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies for the first time describe the daily variability of the circulation of key deep currents in the South Atlantic Ocean that are linked to climate and weather. The study found that the circulation patterns in the upper and deeper layers of the South Atlantic often vary independently of each other, an important new result about the broader Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) in the Atlantic.

Read Full Article
A NOAA ocean glider begins a dive

Robots Probe Ocean Depths in Mission to Fine-Tune Hurricane Forecasts

Four ocean gliders set off to sea this week to bring back data that scientists hope will improve the accuracy of hurricane forecast models.The robotic, unmanned gliders are equipped with sensors to measure the salt content (salinity) and temperature as they move through the ocean at different depths.  The gliders, which can operate in hurricane conditions, collect data during dives down to a half mile below the sea surface, and transmit the data to satellites when they surface.  

Read Full Article
Argo Deployment 2017

Argo Data Acquisition Center at AOML Surpasses One Million Profile Benchmark

Staff with the US Argo Data Acquisition Center (DAC) at AOML marked an important milestone this past February by processing the one millionth profile from Argo floats. The DAC team has been processing and quality controlling all of the raw data obtained from US-deployed Argo floats since 2001, with about 90,000 temperature-salinity profiles processed annually since 2007. These profiles have provided the global scientific community with an unprecedented record of the evolving state of the upper ocean, advancing understanding of the ocean’s role in world climate.

Read Full Article