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Thanks to all who contributed and/or participated in the OceanObs'19 Conference. I was
enormously pleased with the diverse turnout at the Conference. It was a crazy busy week for
many of us in the OOMD Office culminating in the very popular NOAA booth, several panels,
breakout sessions, posters, and hallway conversations. NOAA leadership is pleased with the
effort and overall visibility of NOAA. I came away energized and optimistic regarding the future
of the ocean observing enterprise and the next generation of ocean scientists. I also received
several expressions of concern about the OceanObs'19 Conference that we are taking to heart in
planning any such future Conference. And now the hard work begins.
As noted by many of you, the OceanObs'19 Community Whitepapers are a treasure trove of plans
and anticipated outcomes. We will continue to mine these papers as they relate to our strategic
planning and future activities. We are also continuing to engage with the Program Committee to
guide the development of a useful OceanObs'19 Action Plan.
As many have noted, the House and Senate marks are favorable to OOMD in FY20. Let's hope
the Conference agreement and ultimately the FY20 appropriation are equally favorable and will
be passed soon. Requests for FY19 Progress Reports will go out soon. FY20 Work Plan requests
will be issued in early November.
The buoy servicing articles in this issue remind me of the importance of qualified ships and
crews as well as the many months of preparation of equipment. Congratulations to the scientific
and technical crews of the WHOTS and KEO deployment cruises!
David Legler, Director - Ocean Observing and Monitoring Division
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October 13-18, 2019 in Villefranche, France
COSC Meeting
November 15, 2019 in Silver Spring, MD
November 4-7, 2019 in Hangzhou, China
December 9-13, 2019 in San Francisco, CA
February 19-21, 2020 in San Diego, CA
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 Program Updates
Welcome Colm Sweeney!
As of September 16th, Colm Sweeney has joined our team as Acting Deputy. He will be with us in this role through mid-
December.
Colm received his Ph.D. in 2000 from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University for his studies of biogeochemical processes in the Southern Ocean. He followed this with a three-year tenure at NOAA's Geophysical Fluids Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) doing ocean modeling to better understand air-sea gas exchange and the feedback between ocean biology and ocean circulation. Colm is on leave to OOMD from his position as Lead Scientist for NOAA's Carbon Cycle Group Aircraft Program where he manages a network of aircraft and multiple balloon-borne and aircraft-borne campaigns that focus on constraining emissions of greenhouse gases from oil and gas production, urban centers, arctic regions, the Southern Ocean and the continental US. Colm has participated in over 25 ship and airborne campaigns, the success of which is reflected in more than 140 papers that have put Colm in the top 1% by citations in his field. Colm will be commuting from Boulder, CO where his wife and twin boys live.
Thanks to the Global Monitoring Division (GMD)
for supporting Colm to come to OAR HQ and OOMD on this detail.
The OOMD team would also like to thank
CMDR Tony Perry who has been Deputy Director since early June; Tony is
now
transitioning from OOMD to a new ship-board assignment.
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We are excited to announce four new projects that will advance the biogeochemistry mission of the global
Argo Program
and boost NOAA's ability to measure, track and forecast ocean acidification, warming and other important ocean health indicators.
Two of the selected projects will partner with ocean observation technology companies
Sea Bird Scientific
and
MRV
to refine biogeochemical (BGC) Argo float designs and test new sensors through the release of about 20 floats in the Tropical Pacific, an important region for understanding the ocean's role in the global carbon cycle. Two additional projects will support selected
NOAA Research Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes
in developing and deploying BGC Argo floats and using the resulting information to describe ocean chemistry changes in the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem and northwest Atlantic ocean - both significant areas for fisheries. Read more about these research projects and the Argo Program on NOAA Research.
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Hurricane Lorezo Passes Directly Over PIRATA Mooring
On Thursday, September 26, 2019, Hurricane Lorenzo tracked directly over the PIRATA T-Flex mooring at 15°N, 38°W. Despite the direct hit, the mooring remains in position and continues to transmit high-quality, high-resolution data in real-time. The image to the right shows the approximate location of the mooring superimposed over the Enhanced Infrared (IR) Imagery (1 km Mercator, from MODIS/AVHRR) of Hurricane Lorenzo immediately prior to passing over the PIRATA mooring.
Data collected from PIRATA and RAMA moorings, or the
Global Tropical Moored Buoy Array, helps us understand changes in the ocean and improve our forecasts and predictions of marine events. These
data plots illustrate the oceanic and atmospheric changes during a hurricane, most notably one can see the barometric pressure drops dramatically.
T-Flex (or "Tropical Flex") moorings are a newer generation of moorings developed at PMEL to replace the legacy ATLAS mooring technology. T-Flex incorporates new or updated commercially available sensors and uses Iridium for telemetry of higher temporal resolution data. This is particularly advantageous for observing natural phenomena that occur over short time scales, such as the passing of a hurricane. Unlike ATLAS moorings, T-Flex moorings transmit high-res data in real-time, meaning we do not need to wait a year to recover the mooring before we can take advantage of using the data. Both the
PIRATA
and
RAMA
moored buoy arrays are in the process of transitioning to T-Flex moorings.
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WHOTS Mooring Successfully Recovered and Redeployed
On Friday, October 4, 2019, NOAA ship Sette departed Honolulu, Hawaii for the annual recovery and redeployment of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Hawaii Ocean Timeseries (HOT) Site (WHOTS) deep-water mooring (water depth ~5000 meters). The WHOI group, University of Hawaii group, Sette officers and Sette deck crew all worked together and successfully completed the WHOTS-16 deployment and recovery, for the first time on the Sette ship. Reporting back on October 11th, the team confirmed that the Sette ship is capable of doing future WHOTS mooring work.
The WHOTS mooring was first deployed in 2004, is located about 100 km north of Oahu, and measures air and sea surface temperatures, relative humidity, barometric pressure, wind speed and direction, incoming shortwave and longwave radiation, change in pCO2 (to calculate CO2 flux) and precipitation. Subsurface instruments include vector measuring current meters (VMCM), conductivity, pressure and temperature recorders (Microcats) and acoustic doppler current profilers (ADCP).
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KEO Mooring Turnaround Cruise Completed During Typhoon Season
From September 24 to 29, PMEL and partners aboard the Kaiyo Maru #1 successfully completed the Kuroshio Extension Observatory (KEO) mooring turnaround cruise during typhoon season. Although the cruise faced delays due to typhoon Tapah, the KEO mooring was both deployed and recovered successfully in a single 24-hour period, and was ready to observe Super Typhoon Hagibis which made landfall on October 12, demonstrating it's dual-purpose of relaying real-time weather information and contributing to longer climatological records. In addition to the mooring, four JAMSTEC backscatters meters and an underwater camera were deployed.
The KEO mooring is also known as a storm mooring due to its prime location to observe the transition of tropical cyclones to extra-tropical storms and measure the exchanges of heat and moisture between the atmosphere and ocean during these storms. Typhoons are common in the western North Pacific in the summer and fall. On average, a typhoon passes within 500 nautical miles of the KEO mooring every two weeks during the peak of the tropical cyclone season.
Data from
ocean climate stations moorings can be used to help improve weather and storm forecasts, inform climate projections, and verify satellite products and models. The Kuroshio Extension current carries warm water into the North Pacific and is a region where the ocean generally loses heat to the atmosphere. The exchange of heat and moisture into the atmosphere is an important factor in the development of storms over the north Pacific before they reach the United States.
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TPOS 2020 Updates
TPOS 2020 is preparing for a number of upcoming meetings to help prepare the project for its final year of "design phase" before it enters "implementation phase" in early 2021. First, the TPOS Resources Forum (TRF) is having a lunch meeting at OceanObs'19 to discuss future governance needs and changes that need to be addressed. The TRF is composed of stakeholders from meteorological and oceanographic agencies with interest in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Second, the TPOS Steering Committee is having their 6th meeting, hosted by the Second Institute of Oceanography in Hangzhou, China, in early November. There will be a one-day Western Pacific Technical Workshop, as well as a 3-day Steering Committee meeting. Finally, there is a TPOS 2020 session at Ocean Sciences in San Diego, where presentations will highlight research and operational interests and needs of the region, as well as describe value to stakeholders.
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Call for OCB Scientific Steering Committee Members
Ocean Carbon & Biogeochemistry (OCB) is seeking nominations for new Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) members, including a new early career SSC member. To qualify for the early career slot, a nominee must have completed a PhD within the last 4 years; both postdoctoral researchers and faculty members are eligible. For the early career nominees who are currently postdocs, a letter of support from the nominee's postdoctoral advisor is required. If you wish to nominate someone or self-nominate, please review the requirements and be sure to submit your nomination to the OCB Project Office by November 15, 2019.
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Call for 2020 SCOR Visiting Scholars Program
The application period is now open for the 2020 Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) Visiting Scholars Program. Awards for these scholarships are very competitive. For the 2019 program, 30 applications were received and only 6 scholarships were awarded. The program, started in 2009, has awarded scholarships to scientists at all career levels, from PhD students to retired professors, but because the purpose of the program is teaching and mentoring, extensive experience in working with students gives applicants a higher chance of success. See
here for a list of past SCOR Visiting Scholars.
Applications are due by December 1, 2019 and selections will be made by the SCOR Committee on Capacity Building by January 1, 2020. For more information, view the
application forms and instructions.
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Job Announcement: Glider Community Coordinator
At the recent
8th EGO Meeting & International Glider Workshop, we heard a wide range of great ideas and thoughts on the future of the glider community. These ideas ranged from visionary goals for the community, to practical actions we can take today which will help the broader community.
There was general agreement that we need someone to keep the community engaged, informed, and to help facilitate the implementation of some of the great ideas generated at the meeting. To continue this effort, GCOOS is pleased to announce that we have an opening for a newly funded position: Coordinator for the U.S. Underwater Glider User Group - UG2.
See the full description of the position & information on the application process
here
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Call For Senior Management Meeting Spotlight Presentations
Are you looking for a way to build excitement and support for your research? Consider signing up to deliver a Spotlight Presentation at an upcoming Senior Management Meeting! Every Monday, our leadership in Silver Spring attend the NOAA Research Senior Management Meeting. During each meeting there is an opportunity for scientists and program managers to showcase their research with a 15 minute, high level presentation, which can be delivered virtually from the field. The NOAA Research Communications team offers help with a guided practice session the week before. If you are interested in signing up, please contact your program manager and/or our Communications Specialist,
Jessica Mkitarian.
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ICYMI: OOMD Team Updates
In Case You Missed It:
Congratulations, Kathy!
OOMD Program Manager Kathy Tedesco was one of 30 staff across NCAR, UCAR, and UCP to graduate from UCAR's Leadership Program in September. We asked Kathy about her experience in the Leadership Program:
Why did you want to participate in the UCAR Leadership Academy?
I have been fortunate to work with successful leaders throughout my career and I thought that participation in the Leadership Academy (LA) would give me the opportunity to develop and strengthen the essential skills I value in my role models and become a successful leader, mentor and
a more valuable team member.
What had the greatest impact on you?
In the beginning, we were asked to review our values and write a personal 'mission statement.' Developing my mission statement required me to reflect on what is important to me, what motivates and excites me in both work and life, and how I want to spend my time and energy. I was reminded of my volunteer activities over the years and what they meant to me and reflected on my career and why I first chose this field. Sometimes we get bogged down with deadlines and taskers that seem overwhelming, but I now see things as I did when I first arrived at NOAA in 2002- to help the scientific community make the world a better place.
What are some key takeaways that you will take into the workplace moving forward?
The 360 Review is something I wish I had done earlier in my career. It was helpful to get the views of those I have worked with in various roles and get a reality check on how I see myself and how others see me. While not everyone can participate in a leadership program, I would recommend that everyone should have the opportunity to conduct a 360 review, especially early career employees.
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Recent Publications
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As always, for the OOMD Community, by the OOMD Community.
Do you have news to share with the OOMD Community, or beyond?
Contact Jessica Mkitarian: jessica.mkitarian@noaa.gov or
(301) 427-2472.
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