The Ocean Observatories Initiative

Abstract

The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) is an integrated network that enables scientific investigation of interlinked physical, chemical, biological and geological processes throughout the global ocean. With near real-time data delivery via a common Cyberinfrastructure, the OOI instruments two contrasting ocean systems at three scales. The Regional Cabled Array instruments a tectonic plate and overlying ocean in the northeast Pacific, providing a permanent electro-optical cable connecting multiple seafloor nodes that provide high power and bandwidth to seafloor sensors and moorings with instrumented wire crawlers, all with speed-of-light interactive capabilities. Coastal arrays include the Pioneer Array, a relocatable system currently quantifying the New England shelf-break front, and the Endurance Array, a fixed system off Washington and Oregon with connections to the Regional Cabled Array. The Global Arrays host deep-ocean moorings and gliders to provide interdisciplinary measurements of the water column, mesoscale variability, and air-sea fluxes at critical high latitude locations. The OOI has unique aspects relevant to the international ocean observing community. The OOI uses common sensor types, verification protocols, and data formats across multiple platform types in diverse oceanographic regimes. OOI observing is sustained, with initial deployment in 2013 and 25 years of operation planned. The OOI is distributed among sites selected for scientific relevance based on community input and linked by important oceanographic processes. Scientific highlights include real-time observations of a submarine volcanic eruption, time-series observations of methane bubble plumes from Southern Hydrate Ridge off Oregon, observations of anomalous low-salinity pulses off Oregon, discovery of new mechanisms for intrusions of the Gulf Stream onto the shelf in the Middle Atlantic Bight, documentation of deep winter convection in the Irminger Sea, and observations of extreme surface forcing at the most southerly surface mooring in the world ocean.

Global Perspectives on Observing Ocean Boundary Current Systems

“…Similarly, exchange flows are not always readily observable at the sea surface from satellite or shore-based remote sensing technologies (see the section Remote Sensing) because they are associated with bottom boundary layer flow driven by the boundary current encountering the seafloor or subduction at the sea surface due to boundary current detachment and mixing. Two efforts along the U.S. East Coast are striving to make such measurements using multi-platform observing arrays: the Processes driving Exchange At Cape Hatteras (PEACH) program and the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI; Smith et al, 2018;Trowbridge et al, 2019) Pioneer Array (see the section Northwestern Atlantic). Similarly, in situ and satellite remote sensing observations combined with high-resolution numerical simulations have provided insights into the shelfsea/deep-ocean exchanges near the confluence of the Brazil and Malvinas Currents (Guerrero et al, 2014;Matano et al, 2014;Strub et al, 2015).…”

“…Starting in 2010, moored platforms throughout the California Current System established high-frequency time series of physical and biogeochemical parameters (Nam et al, 2011;Harris et al, 2013;Sutton et al, 2016). More recently, the OOI Endurance Array (Smith et al, 2018;Trowbridge et al, 2019) has been deployed in the northern California Current System ( Figure 5); moorings on the shelf and continental slope provide high-resolution time series, while gliders provide high-spatialresolution observations between the mooring sites. A network of shore-based HF radars provides real-time surface currents within about 150 km of the coast along nearly the entire U.S. West Coast (Kim et al, 2011).…”

Using Authentic Data from NSF’s Ocean Observatories Initiative in Undergraduate Teaching: An Invitation

“…Observations from the OOI can be used to explore myriad Earth system processes (Trowbridge et al, 2019), such as undersea volcanic eruptions (Wilcock et al, 2018), methane hydrates (Philip et al, 2016), earthquakes (Tréhu et al, 2018), coastal hypoxia (Barth et al, 2018), heat budgets (Chen et al, 2018), warm core rings (Gawarkiewicz et al, 2018), global ocean-atmosphere exchange processes (Ogle et al, 2018), and the oceanic biological pump (Palevsky and Nicholson, 2018). Real-time OOI data streams not only provide an effective resource for improving ocean literacy Matsumoto, 2007, 2009) and bring to life many important concepts taught in ocean and Earth science classes ( Table 2), they also represent an opportunity for the oceanographic community to expand the reach of its science into classrooms.…”

“…There are several challenges associated with using OOI data, however, that extend beyond the general challenges of using data in the classroom. First, the OOI arrays have been deliberately located in complex oceanographic settings with high spatial and temporal variation (Trowbridge et al, 2019). Therefore, the data often do not replicate simplified textbook examples.…”

“…The National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) is a source of open access, continuous, long-term digital data that stream from a suite of co-located instruments measuring physical, chemical, geological, and biological properties at multiple locations in the world ocean (Smith et al, 2018;Trowbridge et al, 2019). These data, made publicly available in real time, constitute a valuable resource that undergraduate educators can use to teach a range of oceanographic principles and make the scientific process tangible.…”