The short course will promote the use of NSF’s Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) data for marine meteorological research. The OOI is comprised of five sophisticated arrays of platforms and sensors in the Irminger Sea, the Gulf of Alaska at Ocean Station Papa, the West Coast of Washington and Oregon within the California Current system, the East Coast of North Carolina where the Gulf Stream separates from shore, and a cabled array across the Juan de Fuca plate (see oceanobservatories.org). The data is freely available to researcher, educators, and the general public through our web site. The OOI also provides opportunities to participate in O&M cruises and support to attach additional meteorological sensors to our platforms. The surface moorings at four of these arrays provide bulk meteorological and near surface ocean data (e.g., wind speed, air and sea temperature, relative humidity, pressure, waves, currents, short and long-wave radiative fluxes, and a Direct Covariance Flux System (DCSF) capable of directly measuring the momentum and heat fluxes. The short course will demonstrate how the high frequency 3-axis sonic anemometer data is motion corrected to generate these fluxes. A Jupyter Notebook will be developed for the participants to provide access to the raw sonic and mean meteorological data, the motion correction code, and the COARE 4.0 bulk algorithm for comparison. The course will demonstrate how this data is being used to 1) improve bulk air-sea flux algorithms that parameterize the heat and momentum exchange at moderate to high wind speeds, 2) conduct process studies to investigate wind-wave interactions and the impact of wave-age, wave-steepness and wind-wave directional differences on momentum exchange using surface flux and wave data, and 3) use these investigations to test parameterizations of surface fluxes being used in coupled air-sea mesoscale models. The latter will also address the impact of sea-spray on the sensible and latent heat fluxes, and how this is being parameterize in bulk formula and numerical models.

105th AMS Annual Meeting
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center
January 12, 2025 at 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM Central Time (In Person)

Registration for this course will open in October.

Course Description:

There is a desperate need to train observational marine meteorologists, especially those willing to go to sea and, ultimately, comfortable with sensors. Our OOI data is also being used by mesoscale modelers to improve their surface flux parameterizations from the comfort of their office/lab. Nothing wrong with that. Collaboration between such researchers will better bridge the gap between the observational and modeling communities.

Participants will:

• Gain knowledge of a freely available turbulent flux data set sampled at 10 Hz for the past 8 years on the OOI surface flux moorings.
• Have a better understanding of how these measurements are made under demanding conditions.
• Take advantage of toolboxes used to generate direct covariance and bulk aerodynamic fluxes.
• Provide an awareness of the opportunity to add additional sensors to the OOI arrays and O&M cruises.
• Learn how these fluxes and mean meteorological data can be used to produce publications, generate proposals, and/or used as part of a larger field program.
  
  

  VIEW AGENDA

  If you have questions regarding the course, please contact James B. Edson.

  Instructors:

  

  James B. Edson

  Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Senior Scientist
  NSF's Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), Lead PI.