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Volume and boundary acoustic backscatter envelope fluctuations are characterized from data collected by the Toroidal Volume Search Sonar (TVSS), a 68 kHz cylindrical array capable of 360 degrees multibeam imaging in the vertical plane perpendicular to its axis. The data are processed to form acoustic backscatter images of the seafloor, sea surface, and horizontal and vertical planes in the volume, which are used to attribute nonhomogeneous spatial distributions of zooplankton, fish, bubbles and bubble clouds, and multiple boundary interactions to the observed backscatter amplitude statistics. Three component Rayleigh mixture probability distribution functions (PDFs) provided the best fit to the empirical distribution functions of seafloor acoustic backscatter. Sea surface and near-surface volume acoustic backscatter PDFs are better described by Rayleigh mixture or log-normal distributions, with the high density portion of the distributions arising from boundary reverberation, and the tails arising from nonhomogeneously distributed scatterers such as bubbles, fish, and zooplankton. PDF fits to the volume and near-surface acoustic backscatter data are poor compared to PDF fits to the boundary backscatter, suggesting that these data may be better described by mixture distributions with component densities from different parametric families. For active sonar target detection, the results demonstrate that threshold detectors which assume Rayleigh distributed envelope fluctuations will experience significantly higher false alarm rates in shallow water environments which are influenced by near-surface microbubbles, aggregations of zooplankton and fish, and boundary reverberation.

The United States has had three operational numerical weather prediction centers since the Joint Numerical Weather Prediction Unit was closed in 1958. This led to separate paths for U.S. numerical weather prediction, research, technology, and operations, resulting in multiple community calls for better coordination. Since 2006, the three operational organizations—the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, and the National Weather Service—and, more recently, the Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, have been working to increase coordination. This increasingly successful effort has resulted in the establishment of a National Earth System Prediction Capability (National ESPC) office with responsibility to further interagency coordination and collaboration. It has also resulted in sharing of data through an operational global ensemble, common software standards, and model components among the agencies. This article discusses the drivers, the progress, and the future of interagency collaboration.

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The majority of optimal amplitude shading methods for arrays of irregularly spaced or non-coplanar elements rely on numerical optimizations and iterative techniques to compute the desired weighting function because analytic solutions generally do not exist. Optimality is meant here in the Dolph–Chebyshev sense to provide the narrowest mainlobe width for a given sidelobe level. A simpler and more efficient technique to compute the shading weights for arbitrary line array shapes or element spacings is presented and it is shown that it is sufficient to sample the optimal Dolph–Chebyshev window, computed for a uniform line array of equivalent aperture length, at the element position of the nonuniform array. Examples are given for narrow-band plane-wave beamforming with curved arrays in which phase compensation is achieved by projecting the elements on a line tangent to the array. For the same mainlobe width, the resulting peak sidelobe levels are within 3 dB of a 30-dB Dolph–Chebyshev weighted uniform line array of equal aperture length and number of elements. Results are presented for computer simulations and for data collected at sea with the Toroidal Volume Search Sonar by the Coastal Systems Station, Panama City, Florida. [Work sponsored by ONR-NRL (Contract No. N00014-96-1-G913).]

Multibeam volume acoustic backscatter imagery and reverberation measurements are derived from data collected in 200-m-deep waters in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico, with the Toroidal Volume Search Sonar (TVSS), a 68-kHz cylindrical sonar operated by the U.S. Navy's Coastal System Station. The TVSS's 360-degree vertical imaging plane allows simultaneous identification of multiple volume scattering sources and their discrimination from backscatter at the sea surface or the seafloor. This imaging capability is used to construct a three-dimensional representation of a pelagic fish school near the bottom. Scattering layers imaged in the mixed layer and upper thermocline are attributed to assemblages of epipelagic zooplankton. The fine scale patchiness of these scatterers is assessed with the two-dimensional variance spectra of vertical volume scattering strength images in the upper and middle water column. Mean volume reverberation levels exhibit a vertical directionality which is attributed to the volume scattering layers. Boundary echo sidelobe interference and reverberation is shown to be the major limitation in obtaining bioacoustic data with the TVSS. Because net tow and trawl samples were not collected with the acoustic data, the analysis presented is based upon comparison to previous biologic surveys in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico and reference to the bioacoustic literature.

Acoustic data collected with the U.S. Navy’s 68 kHz Toroidal Volume Search Sonar (TVSS) system were used to measure the microbubble field generated by the wake of the towing vessel at a constant distance of 18 ship lengths astern. Swath bathymetry beamforming and echo detection techniques were adapted to map the sea surface and the spatial distribution of bubble fields observable in the ocean volume with the TVSS. The sonar was towed at 78 m depth yielding a sea surface measurement swath roughly 550 m wide thus allowing observations of wake bubble fields across three parallel ship tracks spaced 200 m apart and over 22 min after generation. Measurements in microbubble fields about 3 min after generation by the ship’s wake yielded an average vertical attenuation of 2.1 dB/m and a maximum acoustic volume scattering strength of −17.1 dB. [Work supported by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.]