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INTRODUCTION:INTERNATIONAL LINKS
The BLUElink> initiative will be a milestone
for Australian oceanographers who, with European and US ocean
science and earth observing teams, have achieved significant
advances in oceans research in the past two decades.
This included development of the array of moorings across
the Pacific Ocean to indicate the onset of El Nino
or La Nina conditions.
The BLUElink> initiative builds on the
Oceanographic and Meteorological Assimilation System, a collaborative
effort between CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology and the Royal
Australian Navy. Dr Schiller and Dr Neville Smith, from the
Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre, are project principal
investigators.
Dr Smith heads up an international project, with centres
in the United States, France and elsewhere around the globe,
to provide operational forecasting for a range of environmental
and industrial purposes. The Australian initiative will be
developed concurrently with the International Global Ocean
Data Assimilation Project, called GODAE.
The first 4-6 day forecasts are expected to be available
by 2005/2006.
One of the most complex issues facing scientists will be
to assimilate all the different streams of data into a single
computer model, which can then deliver recognisable and realistic
forecasts for industry and the community.
Information obtained from instruments and satellites will
be processed by high performance computing centres in Melbourne
and Hobart, together with historical data collected since
1900.
"Our objective will be to forecast what is likely to
be happening at or near the ocean surface and in the upper
two kilometres of the ocean.
"To achieve this, Australia is reliant on the flow of
information from American and European satellites and instruments
deployed in our region by several countries, as well as our
own instruments," Dr Schiller said.
Key influences on ocean prediction are regional ocean currents,
including the East Australian and Leeuwin Currents, the Indonesian
throughflow that drains the Pacific into the Indian Ocean,
and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current in the Southern Ocean.
Earth observing satellites, Topex/Poseidon and its
successor Jason-1, operated by NASA and its French
equivalent CNES, and the European Space Agency’s ERS-2
will be mainstays of the observing network, together with
subsurface observations made by commercial shipping and an
array of robotic profiling floats being deployed around Australia.
Australia led a pilot program as part of the international
Argo project with the deployment in 1999 of 10 robotic
profiling floats north west of Australia. These floats provide
information on temperature and salinity to a depth of 2,000
metres every 10 days. There are currently 25 robotic floats
deployed by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology in an international
pilot program, called Argo, with others planned for
deployment in the next two to three years, including 40 in
the Southern Ocean. As at June 2003, some 850 floats have
been deployed globally by the international partners of Argo.
Optimum coverage will only be achieved with around 3000 floats.
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