Monitoring the North Pacific for Improved Ocean, Weather, and Climate Forecasts
M. J. McPhaden (NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, 7600 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115, U.S.A.)
e-mail : mcphaden@pmel.noaa.gov
INTRODUCTION
As part of the National Ocean Partnership Program (NOPP), PMEL has been funded during 1997-99 to develop and deploy moorings in the North Pacific in collaboration with the University of Washington/Applied Physics Laboratory, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, NOAA/NESDIS, and the Naval Research Laboratory. The first of these moorings was deployed at Ocean Station PAPA (50｡?, 145｡?) from the NOAA Ship Ron Brown on 28 September 1998.
This mooring will be in place for one year, then recovered and redeployed in late 1999. A second mooring site, nominally at 35｡?, 165｡?, will be occupied in late 1999 with a similarly designed mooring. We have dubbed this second site MOMMA (Mid-Ocean Moored Measurement Array). The two moorings will sample contrasting climatic regimes of the subarctic gyre (PAPA) and subtropical gyre (MOMMA). The PAPA mooring will extend the measurements at this site which began in 1956, first as weather ship measurements (until 1981), then as cruises 3-4 times a year along Line P conducted by the Institute of Ocean Sciences (IOS) in Sydney, BC.
OBJECTIVES AND RATIONALE
The overall objectives of our multi-institutional NOPP study are:
･ To develop and deploy new, robust air-sea interaction moorings, one at Station P, a second in the subtropical gyre;
･ To deploy low cost acoustic receivers on PMEL moorings in order to expand the Acoustic Thermometry of Ocean (ATOC) in the North Pacific;
･ To combine these measurements and other data with eddy-resolving ocean circulation models to produce optimal nowcasts and forecasts;
･ To assess the present observing system of the North Pacific, and suggest possible future systems that will improve climate forecasts.
The rationale for this project can be summatized as follows:
･ Anomalous SSTs in the North Pacific are highly correlated with the Pacific North American (PNA) surface atmospheric pressure pattern and with the climate over North America;
･ Variations in North Pacific SSTs are well correlated with various components of the ocean's ecosystem, including plankton and top predators such as salmon;
･ Progress in understanding and ultimately predicting these fluctuations is hampered by lack of systematic time series observations in the upper ocean of the North Pacific.
