OceanObs’09
Community White Paper Proposal
Title
A Demonstrated Use of Autonomous Underwater Gliders in the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System
Lead author:
Scott Glenn, PhD
Marine and Coastal Sciences
School of Environmental and Biological Sciences
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
71 Dudley Road
New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901 USA
phone: +1 732-932-6555 x506
Email:
Contributing authors:
Josh Kohut, PhD
Marine and Coastal Sciences
School of Environmental and Biological Sciences
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
71 Dudley Road
New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901 USA
phone: 732-932-6555 x542
Email:
Clayton Jones
Teledyne Webb Research
82 Technology Park Dr.
E. Falmouth, Massachusetts 02536-4441
Phone: +1 508-548-2077 x113
Email:
Oscar Schofield, PhD
Marine and Coastal Sciences
School of Environmental and Biological Sciences
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
71 Dudley Road
New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901 USA
phone: 732-932-6555 x548
Email:
Description:
The Office of Naval Research has supported academic and industry partnerships to develop long-duration autonomous underwater gliders since the early 1990’s. The vehicles have proven themselves in numerous demonstration projects around the globe. Gliders are now being incorporated into the operational technology portfolios of multiple U.S. agencies. In this talk we present results that demonstrate the utility of autonomous underwater gliders, and how they are currently being deployed as part of the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS).
Incorporation of gliders into the U.S. IOOS process began with three priorities provided by NOAA in 2006, including (a) demonstrating the ability to fly gliders in coordinated fleets, (b) demonstrating the ability to fly gliders into severe storms and hurricanes, and (c) demonstrating that gliders can fly long-duration missions that inspire students to pursue careers in math and science. Each of these demonstration projects was completed over the last 2 years. In the ONR sponsored Shallow Water 2006 Joint Experiment on the New Jersey outer shelf, a fleet of 6 gliders were flown in formation across the shelf-slope front to resolve the submesocale structure for assimilation into dynamical ocean models. Both ONR, NOAA and NSF projects have resulted in gliders being flown into severe storms that returned data on mixing across a strong pycnocline and on sediment resupsension and transport. Most recently, NOAA, ONR, NSF and Rutgers Alumni have contributed to projects that demonstrate long duration international flights between countries that are conducted by teams of undergraduate students.
The gliders are now an integral part of the U.S. IOOS Mid-Atlantic Coastal Ocean Observing System Regional Association (MACOORA). The regional multi-glider missions are coordinated with regional-scale National Marine Fisheries Service sampling cruises at the scale of the Large Marine Ecosystem. The combined physical datasets are then assimilated into an ensemble of ocean models to provide the 3-D structure of the temperature field. The evolving 3-D temperature fields produced by the models can then be related to the observed distributions of fish species found in the Mid-Atlantic. Because of the Mid-Atlantic’s large temperature variations and the resulting migratory nature of its fish species, the impact of changing ocean temperatures on fish distributions may be amplified in this region.