Blue Water and Climate Node

Pete Strutton and Steve Rintoul

With much help from the node

March 8th, 2016

Strengths

• Strong science of global relevance being published

in high profile journals

• Wide and growing uptake by research community,

including use of data by students, grad programs

• Facilities delivering high quality data

• Strong science plan with wide community support

provides a good foundation for strategic decisions

on priorities, challenges and opportunities

• Geographic advantage

• International recognition, ‘valued’

• Identifying and implementing efficiencies (doing

more with less)

Wijffels, Roemmich, Church,

Monselesan and Gilson, NCC, 2016.

Recent high profile publications

Liu, Q.-Y., M. Feng, D. Wang, and S. Wijffels (2015), Interannual variability of the Indonesian Throughflow transport: A revisit based on 30 year expendable

bathythermograph data, J. Geophys. Res. Oceans, 120, 8270–8282, doi:10.1002/2015JC011351.

IMOS XBT network: 30 year record

Strengths

• Strong science of global relevance being published

in high profile journals

• Wide and growing uptake by research community,

including use of data by students, grad programs

• Facilities delivering high quality data

• Strong science plan with wide community support

provides a good foundation for strategic decisions

on priorities, challenges and opportunities

• Geographic advantage

• International recognition

• Identifying and implementing efficiencies (doing

more with less)

• Sloyan et al paper in press at JPO: Transport

analysis

• Assimilation of data into models

• Model-based assessment of multi-platform

monitoring, which can then feed back into the data

assimilation models

• Validation of a tidal model: ‘Bernadette did an

excellent job of cleaning up the data and it was

easy to use’

• Both EAC (Oct 2016) and ITF (Apr 2017) will be

redeployed

EAC array data uptake by community

Haifeng Zhang (UNSW in Canberra)

Monthly (day – night) SST for 2010 – 2014, compared with

monthly surface fluxes from ACCESS-R for the same period.

IMOS ship SST also used as independent satellite validation

Data uptake: Satellite SST for diurnal variability

Strengths

• Strong science of global relevance being published

in high profile journals

• Wide and growing uptake by research community,

including use of data by students, grad programs

• Facilities delivering high quality data

• Strong science plan with wide community support

provides a good foundation for strategic decisions

on priorities, challenges and opportunities

• Geographic advantage

• International recognition

• Identifying and implementing efficiencies (doing

more with less)

161793 km of data since 2010

Mesopelagic Southern Ocean Prey

and Predators

EU project 2016-2019

6 countries with Australian

representation:

ACE-CRC, CSIRO, IMAS, AAD

Development of ecological models

using bioacoustics data

International engagement, regional advantage

International engagement, regional advantage

Over 70K IMOS CTD obs past 60°S

IMOS WOD 13 –ctdWOD 13- PFL

CPR ecosystem indicators

• Shiptime. Two year mooring deployments?

• Science return and piggyback projects can take

time. Excellent value-adding at SOTS and Totten.

• Prioritising regions or processes: Are we doing this

in the best way?

• Integration with regional nodes and across

disciplines improving, but could improve further

• Strong engagement with established blue water

community. Could do even more to entrain new

research user communities

• Contraction of support: Ability to deploy, QC, and

use data

Weaknesses

• Costs for some facilities (SOTS) may decrease

– May enable new projects without cutting existing

• New technologies

– Biogeochemical floats (eg SOCCOM), deep Argo

– Ice-capable floats & AUVs

– Swath altimetry (SWOT)

– Expendable long-duration moorings

– Gliders for boundary current monitoring

– Eddy covariance CO2 fluxes on SOFS-Pulse

– Assimilating obs into forecasting: gliders, XBT, radar

• New drivers: Antarctic 20 year plan, Marine Science

Plan and ‘blue economy’

• New collaborations: Indian Ocean Expedition

Opportunities

• Assess existing national wave buoy network

• Use available tools (CAWCR wave hindcast)

to...

• Determine gaps and recommend possible new

installations.

• Justification

– Renewable energy industry

– Erosion and inundation

– Public safety

Real time wave observations

• Assimilation of data into a 2-5km resolution model

that includes transports. Combined with...

• Model-based assessment of multi-platform

monitoring

• Could lead to a deployment plan for gliders and

moorings for EAC heat, mass, salt transport

Leaveraging the EAC array

• 66 to date:

• 28 India Bio

• 12 India O2

only

• 12 Australia

Bio

• 16 Australia O2

• Planned Bio

(2 years):

• 22 India

• 12 Australia

INCOIS float data courtesy of M. Ravichandran

Indian ocean BGC floats to date

SOCCOM floats

• Prospectus

• Sensor

development

• Regional pilots

• Global design

and costing

Deep Argo: good progress

• Major game-changer on its way in 2020: Wide swath altimetry

– SWOT: Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission

– Unprecedented spatial resolution ~120 km swath width x 1km

• Sub-facility is on the SWOT science team. Mission agencies seeking

cal/val at Bass Strait. Many open questions in this space.

– Requires new approaches to measurement and cal/val

– ARC DP submitted on the topic of “buoy-swarms” for SSH determination

Altimetry: Brave new world

• Costs for some facilities (SOTS) may decrease

– May enable new projects without cutting existing

• New technologies

– Biogeochemical floats (eg SOCCOM), deep Argo

– Ice-capable floats & AUVs

– Swath altimetry (SWOT)

– Expendable long-duration moorings

– Gliders for boundary current monitoring

– Eddy covariance CO2 fluxes on SOFS-Pulse

– Assimilating obs into forecasting: gliders, XBT, radar

• New drivers: Antarctic 20 year plan, Marine Science

Plan and ‘blue economy’

• New collaborations: Indian Ocean Expedition

Opportunities

IMOX: Ming Feng and Lisa Beal

• ‘CSIRO will honour IMOS contracts’

• Argo took a 20% cut, ACE/ACCSP/US contributions

also down: Reduced regional coverage

• GOSHIP reoccupations. Next are 7-8 years away

but need a discussion and plan: Universities?

• National support for ‘public good’ science?

• Ship time on Investigator and in the Antarctic

• Reduced capability and co-investment by one

partner threatens the whole. Especially true for

facilities that are small teams.

• Need for tough prioritisation may threaten goodwill

Threats

Repeat Hydrography

Thanks to:

Leanne Armand, Helen Beggs, John Church, Ming Feng,

Diana Greenslade, Nick Hardman-Mountford, Mark Hemer,

Rudy Kloser, Benoit Legresy, Anthony Richardson, Robin

Robertson, Moninya Roughan, Eric Schulz, Bernadette

Sloyan, Tom Trull, Christopher Watson, Susan Wijffels