1. www.cmar.csiro.au/staff/oke/ 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. www.cmar.csiro.au/staff/oke/ 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 …

3. www.cmar.csiro.au/staff/oke/ 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

4. www.cmar.csiro.au/staff/oke/ Analysis domain 4

5. www.cmar.csiro.au/staff/oke/ 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

6. www.cmar.csiro.au/staff/oke/ SST 6 MODELOBSERVATIONS Intraseasonal Interannual

7. www.cmar.csiro.au/staff/oke/ SLA 7 MODELOBSERVATIONS Intraseasonal Interannual

8. www.cmar.csiro.au/staff/oke/ SSU 8 ZONALMERIDIONAL Intraseasonal Interannual

9. www.cmar.csiro.au/staff/oke/ Observation “footprint” (e.g., Darwin NRS) 9 InterannualIntraseasonal SSH SST

10. www.cmar.csiro.au/staff/oke/ Combined “footprint” for NRSs on interannual time-scales 10 MODELObservations SSH SST

11. www.cmar.csiro.au/staff/oke/ Combined “footprint” for NRSs plus Regional IMOS moorings 11 NRS only NRS + regional IMOS Moorings Small footprint for velocity

12. www.cmar.csiro.au/staff/oke/ SA-IMOS regional moorings array 12 Intraseasonal SSH Intraseasonal SSV

13. www.cmar.csiro.au/staff/oke/ Footprint of individual moorings 13 Cabbage Patch Mooring Deep Slope Mooring

14. www.cmar.csiro.au/staff/oke/ Footprint of individual moorings 14

15. www.cmar.csiro.au/staff/oke/ 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

16. www.cmar.csiro.au/staff/oke/ QLD-IMOS regional mooring array 16

17. www.cmar.csiro.au/staff/oke/ Some moorings are very complimentary 17

18. www.cmar.csiro.au/staff/oke/ NSW-IMOS regional mooring array 18

19. www.cmar.csiro.au/staff/oke/ WA-IMOS regional mooring array 19