PMEL Contributions to the OceanSITES Program

The OCEAN Sustained Interdisciplinary Timeseries Environment observation System (OceanSITES) is built around a worldwide network of long-term, deepwater reference stations measuring many oceanographic and meteorological variables of relevance to climate and biogeochemical cycles. OceanSITES is a contribution to the Global Ocean Observing System and international research programs. PMEL is a major contributor to OceanSITES in the context of the Tropical Ocean Atmosphere/Triangle Trans-Ocean Buoy Network (TAO/TRITON) mooring array in the tropical Pacific, the Pilot Research Moored Array in the Tropical Atlantic (PIRATA), preliminary moorings of a planned array in the Indian Ocean, the new Kuroshio Extension Observatory (KEO) in the Kuroshio Extension's re-circulation gyre, and proposed high latitude moorings in the sub-Arctic Pacific at Ocean Weather Station PAPA and in the sub-Antarctic Zone south of Australia. The KEO mooring and a small subsample of moorings within the larger tropical arrays have been enhanced to measure heat, fresh water, and momentum fluxes. Sample time series of bulk variables and computed fluxes are presented and are compared to NCEP and ECMWF reanalysis products. Many OceanSITES locations have been selected to address multi-disciplinary problems in biogeochemical cycles as well. At present a total of eight OceanSITES moorings carry a standalone system to monitor air-sea carbon flux, including five TAO sites and the KEO site. An expansion of the carbon systems to other OceanSITES locations including the proposed PMEL high-latitude sites and additional TAO flux sites is planned