Monitoring Key to Understanding Global Patterns

Everyone understands the importance of the National Weather Service, whose predictions have vast economic impact on a daily basis.  Examples are endless, but include farmers who need to anticipate the impact of weather on crops; fishermen and coastal communities concerned about storms and their impacts on personal safety; and utility industries and communities concerned about impacts from extreme weather such as heat waves or ice storms. What most people don’t realize is that the atmosphere and oceans are in fact one system.  The oceans help to regulate temperature in the lower part of the atmosphere.  The atmosphere is in large part responsible for the circulation of ocean water through waves and currents.  While weather stations all across the globe monitor the land very well, monitoring the ocean is still in its infancy.  And the oceans are changing, as we have recently witnessed with increasing number and severity of hurricanes, coastal erosion, beach closures, red tides, seafood declines and seafood that is not safe to eat. 

Monitoring the ocean requires the use not only of satellites, but deep-water sensors and near-surface systems like the SeaKeeper 1000™ oceanographic and atmospheric monitoring system.  The U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) is an effort to assimilate data gathered from a variety of research platforms, such as satellites, ships, buoys, deep ocean sensors, aircraft-based sensors, deep-diving profilers and Volunteer Observing Ships (for more information on the VOS program see SeaKeepers Report, Fall 2006). The IOOS is effectively completing the data gathering and analysis capacity of the weather system. Marine Technology Reporter explained in a recent article that, “IOOS is intended to be a major shift in approach to ocean observing, drawing together the vast network of disparate, federal and nonfederal observing systems to produce a cohesive suite of data, information.”

The IOOS is a “system of systems” that will continuously provide quality-controlled data and information on the oceans and Great Lakes from the scale of entire ocean basins to local coastal ecosystems. Good ocean data will greatly improve our ability to monitor, analyze, and predict weather, as well as provide better models on the longer term impact of climate change. The societal and commercial impacts are huge. Current efforts only begin to ascertain what we need to know about the oceanic/atmospheric system, which directly impacts everything from commerce, transportation, weather, climate and complete ecosystems. As the system becomes more established, the Octorber, 2007 article continued, IOOS is “expected to advance beyond its current science and management applications toward an instrument of policy and governance.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been involved with IOOS since its onset nearly a decade ago.  In February 2007, NOAA instituted a program to manage and coordinate the activities of IOOS. NOAA Administrator and Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere Conrad C. Lautenbacher (Vice Admiral U.S. Navy Ret.), stated the mission of the program is to "Lead the integration of ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes observing capabilities, in collaboration with Federal and non-Federal partners, to maximize access to data and generation of information products, inform decision making, and promote economic, environmental, and social benefits to our nation and the world."

[Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher (USN Ret.), NOAA Administrator and Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, sent a letter to SeaKeepers affirming: "the SeaKeeper 1000 is well-known and used throughout NOAA...the innovative system and partnership can help our effort to expand IOOS - click here for letter.]

Providing the data and information needed to address these goals requires an "integrated" observing system that efficiently links observations, data communications and management with data analysis and modeling, and provides rapid access to multidisciplinary data from many sources. The system is also intended to provide data and information required to achieve multiple goals that historically have been the domain of separate agencies, offices or programs. IOOS is designed to efficiently link advances in science and technology to the development of operational capabilities and create cross-cutting partnerships among federal and state agencies, the private sector, and academic institutions.

Heightened concerns about changing ocean conditions are driving scientists and government to make the IOOS an operating reality. As a result, SeaKeepers’ innovative monitoring system is gaining increased attention as a cost-effective component. The SeaKeeper 1000 system automatically collects and transmits (via the NOAA satellite system) some of the specific physical ocean data that NOAA is focusing on - temperature, salinity, and ocean color – to a very high level of accuracy, enabling climatological as well as meteorological precision. This is an important distinction. For weather or meteorological purposes it might suffice to know, for example, the accuracy of sea surface temperature to a single degree. But to be useful in long-term climate studies, scientists require temperature accuracy to a hundredth of a degree. The SeaKeepers data, integrated with physical ocean data collected from other instruments and other parameters such as sea-level and ocean currents, will improve NOAA's efforts to model and forecast a variety of concerns such as harmful algal blooms, coastal flooding, hurricane intensity, and ecosystem assessments.

In October 2007, VADM Lautenbacher sent a congratulatory letter to the International SeaKeepers Society for “promoting coastal and ocean public awareness and stewardship.” In it he stated, “The SeaKeeper 1000 is well-known and used throughout NOAA….the data collected by these instruments are integrated into NOAA’s atmospheric and ocean data centers and used for a variety of products and services….NOAA believes that the innovative system and partnership can help our effort to expand IOOS.”

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