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Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in partnership with Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Oregon State University's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences. Sustained atmospheric, physical, biogeochemical, ecological, and seafloor observations at high latitudes are required to understand critical influences on the global ocean-atmosphere system. Currently, no capability exists to collect these coincident, multidisciplinary time-series data. The OOI’s design process has identified four strategic high-latitude sites for initial global-scale nodes: the South Pacific off Chile (55°S, 90°W), the South Atlantic in the Argentine Basin (42°S, 42°W), the Irminger Sea (60°N, 39°W) in the subpolar North Atlantic and Ocean Station Papa (50° N, 145°W) in the Gulf of Alaska. OOI infrastructure will provide the power, bandwidth, and platform space to support more capable sensor packages, bring back as much data in near real time as possible from these under-sampled regions, and permit two-way communications to control and change sampling strategies in response to contextual information. OOI's GSN will serve as a foundation and proof of concept of new technology, encourage the development of sophisticated, multidisciplinary sensor suites, and become the basis for future expansions and national and international partnerships. The GSN will be an important element of the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) and thus contribute to establishing truly global ocean coverage. The planned GSN infrastructure will provide comprehensive surface-to-seafloor observing capability. Paired surface and subsurface moorings will provide the capacity to resolve surface forcing, and water column, benthic, and seafloor processes in time and in the vertical. Flanking moorings and gliders will collect data on the site’s mesoscale context, including spatial gradients and advective influences. The Global site surface moorings will use an inverse catenary mooring line incorporating inductive and acoustic telemetry to subsurface instrumentation. The buoy will be designed to self-right and carry electronics and storage batteries. A combination of solar (deck-mounted) and wind (tower-mounted) power-generation systems will provide continuous power delivery capability. A mast will provide mounting for air-sea interaction sensors. This design can be launched, maintained, and recovered by University National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) vessels. Each site will have a subsurface profiler mooring close to the surface mooring; that mooring will have two profilers. One will operate from ~200 m to the surface and the other from ~200 m to the seafloor. The upper profiler will penetrate the surface, allowing satellite data telemetry. Two additional subsurface moorings will be deployed to form a triangular array ~50 km on a side. These flanking moorings have their uppermost flotation at ~30 m depth and instruments at discrete depths along the mooring line. They will provide data intermittently, using the gliders for data collection from the moorings. Moored sensors will sample physical, chemical, and biological variability. Sampling within and around the triangular array will be done using several gliders. These gliders will carry multidisciplinary sensor suites will be commandable to alter their sampling patterns. Learn more » Global-Scale Node Locations Last updated: July 13, 2009 | ||||||||||||||||||
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