Upper Ocean Climatology from Moored Observations

• Main Authors: Weller, Robert A., Plueddemann, Albert J.
• Other Authors: WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION MA
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2001
• Subjects: Physical and Dynamic Oceanography; *OCEANS; *CLIMATOLOGY; DATA BASES; INPUT; GLOBAL; MODELS; SITES; AIR FLOW; WIND; SURFACES; RESOURCES; RECORDS; INTERNAL WAVES; OPEN WATER; MOORING; Subarctic
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA388099; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA388099

Surface moorings have been used to collect high quality meteorological and oceanographic data in a variety of locations throughout the world's oceans. The experimental sites range from open ocean to coastal, span climatic regimes from tropical to subarctic, and include variety of forcing regimes from benign to severe. These data represent a valuable resource, but not all of the records are readily accessible and some are in danger of becoming unrecoverable. In addition, the records have not been processed in a cosistent manner and are not available in a standard format. We propose to make these data readily available and analyze them from a global perspective. The first phase of the proposed work will be to recover all of the data sets, reprocess them as necessary, and produce a CD-Rom containing data from the twenty experiments in a common format. A browser-based interface will be developed to allow easy access to both the CD-Roms and a copy of the data available in real-time over the World Wide Web. The second phase of the project will use the data archive to address two upper ocean climatology issues. First, the vertical structure of wind driven flow will be examined and the performance of mixed layer models in simulating that flow will be assessed. Second, the variability of internal wave energy in the upper ocean and its relationship to the energy input by the local wind will be investigated.