Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
2. Oceanographic Data
Observational oceanography has seen a rapid expansion in earth observing
instrumentation over the past two decades driven by the need to observe the
climate system and conduct research into climate change science. The Inter-
national Ocean Commission has implemented GOOS permanently. NASA,
ESA and CNES have supported a number of remote sensing satellite pro-
grams including the Earth Observing System.
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Some of the oceanographic
variables being remotely observed together with the instrumented satellites
and launch dates are outlined in Table 1.
In addition to satellite oceanography several
in situ
observational pro-
grammes have been undertaken including: Ship of Opportunity Program
(SOOP) that deploy Expendable Bathy-Thermograph (XBT), Tropical
Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) that maintains a network of moorings in the
tropical Pacific and Argo, a program to deploy autonomous vertical pro-
filing drifters. A significant number of these instruments contribute to the
NRT ocean observing system, which are routinely distributed by the World
Meteorological Organisation's Global Telecommunications System (GTS)
as well as internet servers.
Accurate bathymetry is essential for the representation of ocean circu-
lation and shelf current systems. BLUElink
>
has blended analyzed gridded
products from Geoscience Australia including a 1 km resolution bathymetry
dataset for the Australian region with global datasets from the US Navy.
Ocean models are forced at the surface by atmospheric fluxes of momen-
tum, heat and fresh water. Atmospheric forcing is available at the Bureau
from Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) systems run twice daily. The
Table 1. Earth observing satellites measuring ocean related variables that con-
tribute to the near real-time global ocean observing system.
Variables
Instruments
Launch
Sea surface temperature
AVHRR,
. . . , 2000, 2002
AATSR, AMSR-E
2001
2001
Sea surface height
Topex-Poseidon,
1992
GFO
1998
Jason-1,
2001
ENVISAT
2002
Sea surface salinity
Aquarius
2002
Wind stress
QuikSCAT
1999
