2007 Research Highlights In February 2007, several Department researchers braved rough winter storms—with winds reaching 30 meters per second (nearly 70 miles per hour)—for major field work in the CLIVAR Mode Water Dynamics Experiment (CLIMODE). Terry Joyce served as chief scientist as the R/V Knorr spent six weeks in the North Atlantic, deploying and recovering buoys and making hydrographic and weather observations. Joyce, John Toole, and colleagues looked for evidence of Gulf Stream waters being modified by winter conditions and being carried down to intermediate depths. Al Plueddemann (WHOI) and Jim Edson (University of Connecticut) deployed an Air-Sea Interaction Spar buoy to measure how much heat the ocean was losing when cold, dry air from land blew over the region. The research team was even called on to recover Bob Weller’s surface mooring—previously deployed in the Gulf Stream—that had gone adrift just before the Knorr sailed from Woods Hole. PO Department researchers also have been perfecting sensors and buoy systems that can collect accurate meteorological observations at the ocean surface as well as exchanges of heat, freshwater, and momentum between the air and sea. And they are using such data to synthesize global maps of the exchange of heat and freshwater between the atmosphere and ocean. The development and use of bottom-anchored and free-f loating platforms—such as autonomous underwater vehicles, gliders, and novel buoy designs—continues and is increasing our understanding of the ocean. A growing strength and focus for the Department involves collaborative efforts to improve our understanding of the Arctic. Several field programs were initiated in conjunction with the International Polar Year and aided by funds from WHOI’s Arctic Research Initiative and the Ocean and Climate Change Institute. Working with WHOI engineers and field technicians, PO scientists are developing innovative observing tools for surviving the extremes of the North, including: a vertical profiler that is tethered to the ice; an under-ice version of the Argo profiling float; a microstructure instrument to sample fine-scale variability and mixing of Arctic waters; bottom-anchored moorings fitted with moored profilers; and even a subsurface mooring that uses a winch float to take instruments up to the surface and back down again when endangered by floating ice. Investigators are complementing these field studies with new numerical and laboratory models. The year included the announcement of a major new observing effort that is being led by staff from PO and WHOI’s Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering Department. In August, the National Science Foundation announced that it has awarded WHOI and its partners at Oregon State University and Scripps Institution of Oceanography a $98 million contract to design and deploy two coastal and three global observatories for the national Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The OOI passed a Preliminary Design Review in December 2007 and is working toward a Final Design Review in 2008. The development of a regional Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) in the Northeast U.S. is being coordinated with these OOI efforts, with the goal of setting up an Atlantic coastal observatory, a “pioneer array” spanning the continental shelf south of Woods Hole. Last updated: December 17, 2009 | |||||||||||||||||||
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