The Tropical Ocean‐Global Atmosphere observing system: A decade of progress

Abstract

Abstract. A major accomplishment of the recently completed Tropical Ocean-Global Atmosphere (TOGA) Program was the development of an ocean observing system to support seasonal-to-interannual climate studies. This paper reviews the scientific motivations for the development of that observing system, the technological advances that made it possible, and the scientific advances that resulted from the availability of a significantly expanded observational database. A primary phenomenological focus of TOGA was interannual variability of the coupled oceanatmosphere system associated with E1 Nifio and the Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Prior to the start of TOGA, our understanding of the physical processes responsible for the ENSO cycle was limited, our ability to monitor variability in the troi•ical oceans was primitive, and the capability to predict ENSO was nonexistent. TOGA therefore initiated and/or supported efforts to provide real-time measurements of the following key oceanographic variables: surface winds, sea surface temperature, subsurface temperature, sea level and ocean velocity. Specific in situ observational programs developed to provide these data sets included the Tropical AtmosphereOcean (TAO) array of moored buoys in the Pacific, a surface drifting buoy program, an island and coastal tide gauge network, and a volunteer observing ship network of expendable bathythermograph measurements. Complementing these in situ efforts were satellite missions which provided near-global coverage of surface winds, sea surface temperature, and sea level. These new TOGA data sets led to fundamental progress in our understanding of the physical processes responsible for ENSO and to the development of coupled ocean-atmosphere models for ENSO prediction.And thorough this distemperature we see the seasons alter

ICOADS Release 2.5: extensions and enhancements to the surface marine meteorological archive

“…Data from tropical moored buoy arrays -specifically, the Tropical Atmosphere Ocean/TRIangle Trans-Ocean buoy Network (TAO/TRITON) array in the Pacific (McPhaden et al, 1998) and the Prediction and Research Moored Array in the Atlantic (PIRATA) (Bourlès et al, 2008) -are provided by NDBC, the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAM-STEC). The Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS) at Florida State University contributes high-resolution measurements from some ocean research vessels (R/Vs) (Gould and Smith, 2006).…”

Strong and moderate nonlinear El Niño regimes

“…Daily surface (4 m) wind observations from the TAO/ TRITON buoy array (McPhaden et al 1998(McPhaden et al ) for 1993(McPhaden et al -2013, when temporal and spatial sampling is approximately homogeneous, are used to calculate monthly pseudo-stress anomalies from the climatology for the same period and wind stress is estimated using a neutral drag coefficient of 1.2 × 10 −3 (e.g. Harrison 1989).…”

A note on the vertical scales of temperature and salinity and their signature in dynamic height in the western Pacific Ocean: Implications for data assimilation

“…However, it is clear that regardless of the particular assimilation method one might use, the first issue to be addressed is how to estimate the model salinity error in the absence of any direct salinity observations. The central components of the TOGA observing system for ENSO studies are the Tropical Atmosphere-Ocean (TAO) array of moored buoys [McPhaden et al, 1998] and the volunteer observing ship (VOS) expendable bathythermograph (XBT) program. These programs provide subsurface temperature data but not salinity data.…”