Design and Assessment of the Australian Integrated Marine Observing System Peter Oke* and Pavel Sakov*^ *CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research ^ NERSC June 2011
2 There’s nothin’ worse than a modeller who reckons they know what they’re talking about … You know you’re in trouble when you start to believe your model … Delivering recommendations to skeptical observational oceanographers is fraught with danger …
Outline Goal: to contribute to discussion about the design of IMOS Scope of work: limited to shelf and coastal IMOS components Strategies: Explicitly consider design aspects for intraseasonal ( 14-mth) variability Analysis of signal-to-noise ratios: relevant to observation platforms that are infrequent in time Correlation footprints Key Outcomes: The National Reference Stations provide remarkably good coverage for monitoring interannual variability over the shelf The regional IMOS mooring arrays significantly improve the coverage on intraseasonal time-scales Some redundancy in regional mooring arrays 3
Analysis domain 4
Datasets Observed SST -- ¼ degree composites from AVHRR and AMSRE, processed at CMAR-Hobart Observed SSH – ¼ degree gridded SSH from all altimeters, processed at CMAR-Hobart Modelled SST, SSH, SSV, … Bluelink model (Spinup6p8) Configuration of MOM4p1 1/10 degree horizontal resolution 5-m vertical resolution near surface 5
SST 6 MODELOBSERVATIONS Intraseasonal Interannual
SLA 7 MODELOBSERVATIONS Intraseasonal Interannual
SSU 8 ZONALMERIDIONAL Intraseasonal Interannual
Observation “footprint” (e.g., Darwin NRS) 9 InterannualIntraseasonal SSH SST
Combined “footprint” for NRSs on interannual time-scales 10 MODELObservations SSH SST
Combined “footprint” for NRSs plus Regional IMOS moorings 11 NRS only NRS + regional IMOS Moorings Small footprint for velocity
SA-IMOS regional moorings array 12 Intraseasonal SSH Intraseasonal SSV
Footprint of individual moorings 13 Cabbage Patch Mooring Deep Slope Mooring
Footprint of individual moorings 14
Summary NRS array provides remarkably good coverage of interannual (>14-m) variability over the shelf Regional IMOS mooring array significantly improves the coverage for intraseasonal (<60-d) variability Many regional IMOS moorings provide complimentary information about the circulation 15
QLD-IMOS regional mooring array 16
Some moorings are very complimentary 17
NSW-IMOS regional mooring array 18
WA-IMOS regional mooring array 19