Introduction

The National Data Buoy Center's (NDBC's) enhanced Coastal Weather Buoy (CWB) is located inside of the Shelfbreak Front dividing the warmer, saltier waters of the Continental Slope from the cooler, fresher waters of the Continental Shelf and is a region of high productivity (Gawarkiewicz and Plueddemann 2020 and references therein). Along the front is the Shelfbreak Jet, which plays a critical role in shelfbreak exchange processes along with warm core eddies, frontal instabilities and wind forcing (Gawarkiewicz and Plueddemann 2020). The front creates conditions for some of the strongest ocean forcing of the atmosphere on the mesoscale (Seo et al. 2023), motivating the selection of this site for our pilot enhancements, as well as the 7-year U.S. NSF Ocean Observation Initiative (OOI) Pioneer Array project that took place from 2015 to 2022 (Gawarkiewicz and Plueddemann 2020) near this location.

This project involves collaboration with NOAA research (PMEL and CICOES) and operations (NDBC). The National Weather Service and national and international modeling centers are the anticipated primary end users of the new data products. In addition, these co-located air-sea measurements will be useful for verifying the next generation of coupled assimilative models and advancing process understanding of the ocean’s influence on weather and climate. This project also contributes to the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS).

Funding for this project is provided by NOAA WPO award NA23OAR4590404.

Gawarkiewicz, G., and A. J. Plueddemann, 2020: Scientific rationale and conceptual design of a process-oriented shelfbreak observatory: the OOI Pioneer Array. J Oper Oceanogr, 13, 19–36, https://doi.org/10.1080/1755876x.2019.1679609.

Seo, H., and Coauthors, 2023: Ocean Mesoscale and Frontal-Scale Ocean–Atmosphere Interactions and Influence on Large-Scale Climate: A Review. J. Clim., 36, 1981–2013, https://doi.org/10.1175/jcli-d-21-0982.1.

Project Description

Title: Pilot Enhancement of a NOAA NDBC Coastal Weather Buoy for Improved Monitoring of Weather and Climate

Project Leads: Yolande Serra (CICOES/UW), Meghan F. Cronin (PMEL/NOAA), Dongxiao Zhang (CICOES/UW, PMEL/NOAA), and Ian Sears (NDBC/NOAA). Former project Co-Is Karen Grissom (formerly NDBC/NOAA) and Samantha Wills (formerly CICOES/UW, PMEL/NOAA) also contributed to the initial stages of this project.

The enhanced NDBC Coastal Weather Buoy (CWB) at station 44008, 54 nm southeast of Nantucket in 72 meters depth water was equipped with additional sensors to deliver real-time and post-deployment quality-controlled data products for: air-sea heat, moisture and momentum fluxes, ocean heat content and surface mixed layer variability, and current profiles, in addition to its standard measurements of air temperature, dew point, sea surface temperature (SST), wind speed and direction, surface pressure, and wave height, period and direction. The new sensors (shown as blue text in the mooring schematic below) include shortwave and long wave radiation mounted to the buoy frame, 1-m depth conductivity-temperature, 3-m depth current meter, and conductivity-temperature sensors (3 with pressure as well) installed from 5 to 45 meter depths at 5-m intervals. An upward looking acoustic doppler current profiler (ADCP) has also been added at 55 meter depth to provide current profiles at 2-m vertical resolution from ~4 - 50 meter depth.

Data Download

Standard meteorological data from NDBC station 44008 are available at NDBC. The enhancement data (e.g. radiation, ocean currents, high-resolution temperature and salinity measurements) will be made available after the buoy is recovered, which is currently planned for the spring/summer of 2026.