News - 15 Nov 2011

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NOAA Partners with Navy to Deploy Ocean Observatory KEO Ocean Observatory Upgraded During a Service Cruise aboard the US Navy's Military Sealift Command Ship USNS SAFEGUARD

An innovative partnership between NOAA and the US Navy brings research scientists one step closer to understanding the intricate relationship between the atmosphere and ocean that will help lead to improved predictability of weather, global climate, and changes in the ocean environment. On Nov 14th, scientists from NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL), onboard the US Navy's Military Sealift Command ship USNS SAFEGUARD deployed an upgraded Ocean Climate Station Mooring on the southern edge of the Kuroshio Extension Current, 340 miles SE of Tokyo, Japan. The crew of the USNS SAFEGUARD successfully and safely deployed the 9 ft diameter surface buoy, which weighs 2900 lbs, and the 5 miles of wire and nylon line used to anchor the mooring in 18,700 feet of water.

KEO now measures pH

The upgraded Kuroshio Extension Observatory (KEO) now includes a sensor that monitors ocean acidity (pH) of the surface seawater. The buoy has measured carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in the air and surface water since 2007, but the additional sensor will allow scientists to determine directly the effects of ocean uptake of CO2 on changes in ocean acidification. This mooring is the newest addition to a network of buoys monitoring the acidification of ocean waters around the globe.

"This enhanced KEO mooring supports NOAA's commitment to improve the Nation's ability to anticipate and respond to climate impacts and to conserve and manage healthy oceans, coastal ecosystems, and marine resources. The high quality measurements from this mooring will be used to study the processes controlling the role of the ocean in the global carbon cycle, and to investigate how rising atmospheric CO2 and climate change affect the chemistry of the oceans and its marine ecosystems", says Dr. Christopher Sabine, Director of PMEL and a principal investigator with the NOAA PMEL Carbon Program.

KEO is part of the network of OceanSITES

In addition to the carbon sensors, the mooring carries meteorological and physical sensors to monitor winds, air temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure, near-surface currents, and ocean temperatures and salinity to a depth of 1720 feet. This heavily instrumented surface mooring was designed, built, and deployed by NOAA's PMEL to add to the global network of OceanSITES time series reference sites.

"These data are used as a base line for assessing the accuracy of numerical weather prediction models and satellite observations and for improving these products. The KEO data are also being used to study how the ocean and atmosphere affect each other during the frequent and intense winter storms and typhoons that occur in this region", says Dr. Meghan Cronin, director of the Ocean Climate Station group at NOAA PMEL.

The Kuroshio Extension is a western boundary current, similar to the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic, and a region of intense oceanic heat loss to the atmosphere. The mooring was originally deployed in June 2004 in conjunction with the Kuroshio Extension System Study (KESS), an international process study. The newly deployed mooring is the 9th in a series of annually serviced moorings that provide an extremely valuable time series of continuous oceanic and atmospheric measurements. Each year, the mooring is recovered and replaced with one that includes freshly calibrated and refurbished instruments that were recovered the prior year. Previous deployments have been serviced by University-National Oceanographic Laboratory Systems (UNOLS) ships through a partnership with the U.S. KESS investigators, and by Japanese ships through a partnership with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC).

NOAA Partners with the US Navy

The ship time needed to safely service this mooring, and to recover the prior mooring with its load of expensive sensors and irreplaceable data, was made available through a joint partnership between NOAA and the United States Navy's Military Sealift Command. USNS SAFEGUARD (T-ARS-50), a 255-foot salvage vessel assigned to the Naval Fleet Auxiliary Force stationed with the US Navy's 7th Fleet out of Yokosuka, Japan, is a U.S. ship already stationed in the area, thus reducing the overall expense of maintaining this ocean observatory.

NOAA Mission

NOAA's mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources.

KEO is funded by the NOAA's Climate Program Office.