U.S. Dept. of Commerce / NOAA / OAR / ERL / PMEL / Publications
TOGA-TAO and the 1991-93 El Niño-Southern Oscillation
Event
Michael J. McPhaden
Conclusion
A major goal of the TOGA program is to develop a predictive
capability for
short-term climate variations on time scales of seasons to a few
years. By analogy
with present efforts in
weather prediction, achieving this goal will rely on the
development of suitable
dynamic climate
models and the establishment of an observing system to provide
initialization and
validation data
for model forecasts. Significant progress has been made during
TOGA toward developing
measurement programs to support short-term climate prediction.
In particular, the
TOGA-TAO
Array is providing an unprecedented in situ data stream
for real-time
monitoring of tropical Pacific surface wind, SST, thermocline
depth and upper ocean
current variations. The data are of sufficient accuracy and
resolution to allow for a
coherent description of the basin-scale evolution of these key
oceanographic
variables, and important processes such as the
excitation and propagation of equatorial Kelvin waves can now be
observed in
real-time. Progress has likewise been made in the
development of models for
ENSO prediction (e.g., Barnett et al., 1988; Cane et
al., 1986; Ji and
Leetmaa, 1992). However, existing
prediction schemes have limited forecast skill, and
initialization procedures for
dynamic climate
forecast models have not yet been developed to take full
advantage of available
oceanic and atmospheric data sets. Moreover, TOGA-TAO will not
be completed until
1994, so that sufficient time will not be available before the
scheduled end of TOGA
to evaluate critically its
utility for ENSO predictions. As a result, planning is in
progress to continue the
TAO Array in
support of the World Climate Research Program's CLIVAR (Climate
Variability) study,
and in
support of a U.S. contribution to CLIVAR, namely the Global Ocean
Atmosphere Land
System
(GOALS) program. GOALS and CLIVAR, research programs scheduled
for the 15-year
period
1995-2010, will build on the success of TOGA to understand and
predict better the
coupled ocean-atmosphere variability originating in the tropics
on time scales of
seasons to a few years.
TOGA-TAO is also being considered as a contribution to the
proposed Global Climate
Observing
System (World Meteorological Organization, 1992), the proposed
Global Ocean Observing
System (Joint Oceanographic Institutions, 1993), and the proposed
International
Research Institute
for Climate Prediction (IRICP Task Group, 1992).
Epilogue
This article is dedicated to the late Dr. Stanley P. Hayes
of NOAA's Pacific
Marine Environmental Laboratory. It was through Stan's
inspiration that TOGA-TAO was
conceived, and through his persistence and dedication that it was
implemented. Stan's
research was characterized by the innovative application of
observational techniques
to important problems in
physical oceanography. Where suitable techniques did not exist,
Stan guided the
engineering developments necessary to achieve his objectives, as
for example, with the
ATLAS mooring. He
served on steering committees for TOGA and World Ocean
Circulation Experiment (WOCE),
and
in 1989 was awarded NOAA's highest honor, the Department of
Commerce Gold Medal, for
his
leadership in the EPOCS Program. In a career marked by
distinction, Stan leaves a
legacy of over 60 scientific publications, and a visible imprint
on international
climate programs being carried out today.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Ed Harrison and Bill Kessler of NOAA/PMEL,
Todd Mitchell and
Nick Bond of the University of Washington Joint Institute for the
Study of Atmosphere
and Ocean (JISAO), Roger Lukas of the University of Hawaii, and
Joel Picaut of ORSTOM
Nouméa, for comments
on an earlier version of this manuscript. Dai McClurg, Paul
Freitag, and Margie
McCarty of NOAA/PMEL were responsible for graphics presentations,
and Paul Freitag
supplied TOGA island wind data. Implementation of the TOGA-TAO
Array has been
managed
by Ms. Linda Mangum, TAO Project Manager, and Captain Otto
Steffin, TAO Operations
Manager, both of NOAA/PMEL. TOGA-TAO is supported in the United
States by the U.S.
TOGA Project Office
and the EPOCS program; in Japan by the Japanese Science and
Technology Agency; in
France
by ORSTOM; in Korea by the Korean Science and Technology Agency;
and in Taiwan by
the
National Science Council. Production of this paper was supported
by the U.S. TOGA
Project Office and EPOCS. JISAO contribution number 239.
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