OOI Science Plan: Exciting Opportunities using OOI Data
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FIGURE 3.19 Pioneer’s mooring array utilizes two different mooring types-- Surface Moorings and Profiling Moorings. Moorings are supplemented by coastal gliders , profiling gliders, and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Credit: Center for Environmental Visualization, University of Washington.
the vicinity of the front.
Five track-line following gliders are piloted along pre-defined routes within the glider operating area of 185 km by 130 km to observe frontal characteristics as well as Gulf Stream rings, eddies, and meanders in the slope sea. The two Pioneer AUVs are operated in campaign mode from ships, with a goal of six missions per year at nominal twomonth intervals. The AUV missions are 14 km by 47 km rectangles centered on the mooring array, one oriented along-shelf and one oriented crossshelf. The AUVs capture synoptic “snap-shots” of the rapidly evolving shelf break frontal system.
The rectangular mooring portion of the array includes seven sites between 95 and 450 m depth and utilizes two different mooring types (Fig. 3.19). Surface Moorings have instrumented buoys, as well as multidisciplinary instrument packages at 7 m below the surface and on the seafloor. Profiling Moorings contain wire-following profilers and upward-looking Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers. The mooring array spans along- and across-shelf distances of 9 km and 47 km, respectively, and the mooring sites are separated from each other by distances of 9.2 km to 17.5 km. In winter, there are ten moorings occupying the seven Pioneer sites; all sites contain Profiling Moorings and three sites contain both Profiling and Surface Moorings. In summer, the Profiling Moorings at the Central and Inshore sites are replaced by Profiling Gliders to observe near-surface stratification that would be missed by the profilers.
C. OOI Data Delivery System The OOI was designed with the goal of providing a continual stream of ocean observing data that would serve to enhance scientific investigations of the ocean, and ultimately increase understanding of ocean processes. Data are delivered through the Data Portal on OOI’s website, where users can view and download 70
