TAO Home About the TAO project Data display pages Data access El Niño and La Niña information Site map
TAO TIP5 Summary

Summary

Other TIP pages
TIP homepage
Other TIP 5pages
TIP 5 Table of contents
Summary
Opening of the meeting
Summary of current conditions in the Tropical Pacific
National reports
Program status reports
Science reports
Recommendations
Acknowledgments

The fifth session of the TAO Implementation Panel (TIP-5) was held in Goa, India during 18-21 November 1996. The meeting was hosted by the National Institute of Oceanography. The purposes of TIP-5 were to review the present status of TAO array; to address technical and logistic issues related to its maintenance; to provide a forum for discussion of possible enhancements and/or expansions of the array to other tropical oceans and to higher latitudes; and to promote the scientific utilization of TAO data.

TIP-5 was coordinated with the first meeting of the CLIVAR Monsoon Panel, which was held during 19-22 November at the same location. Several sessions of the CLIVAR Monsoon Panel and TAO panel were conducted jointly, with a combined attendance of about 50 participants. An important objective of the CLIVAR Monsoon Panel meeting was to review scientific issues related to variability and predictability of the Austral-Asian monsoon system, and to formulate an implementation strategy for observational, empirical and modeling studies needed to address those issues. The overlapping themes of the TAO Panel and the CLIVAR Monsoon Panel meetings (specifically related to possible extensions of the TOGA observing system into regions influenced by the Austral-Asian monsoon) made it advantageous to closely coordinate the scheduling of these two panel meetings.

TIP-5 opened with a review of recent conditions in the equatorial Pacific, characterized by a lingering weak La Niña. The panel then turned to discussing issues of instrumentation, array maintenance, and data dissemination. Topics included ship time requirements; the commissioning of the new NOAA ship Ka'imimoana, dedicated to servicing the TAO array primarily east of the date line; progress in developing a new generation ATLAS mooring (with nine systems deployed already in the equatorial Pacific); updates of the World Wide Web TAO pages, including new Java applications; Web access to a new COARE moored data archive at NOAA/PMEL; the status of TAO ocean velocity and salinity measurements; and TAO data throughput on the GTS. Fishing-related mooring and data losses (most severe in the western Pacific), and strategies to alleviate these losses, were also discussed.

Presentations were made on several proposed and, in some cases already funded, enhancements and expansions to the TAO array. These included shortwave radiation measurements along 165°E beginning in 1997 with support from the U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurements program; bio-optical, pCO2, and nutrient measurements for studies of biogeochemical cycling in the equatorial Pacific beginning in November 1996; and moorings in the South China Sea coordinated with the South China Sea Monsoon Experiment (SCSMEX) in 1997-98. A proposed enhancement of the TAO array for moored measurements of in situ rainfall rates in support of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) was described. Progress in planning two new TAO-related mooring programs, the Japanese Indo-Pacific Triangle Trans Ocean Buoy Network (TRITON) program and the Brazilian-French-U.S. Pilot Research Moored Array in the Tropical Atlantic (PIRATA) was also reviewed.

Scientific presentations highlighted large scale ocean dynamics and ocean-atmosphere interactions in all three tropical ocean basins. Several of these presentations served as background for discussion of implementation strategies directed at the Austral-Asian monsoon for which the following set of priority goals were identified:

  • To determine the limits of predictability of the monsoon climate system.
  • To assess the relative contributions of the slowly varying boundary conditions and the internal dynamics to the predictability of the monsoon.
  • To evaluate the impact of the monsoon on the predictability of the global climate system.
Given the enormous societal consequences of monsoon rainfall variability in the Indo-Pacific region, and the potential for global impacts of that variability, there are compelling reasons to develop coordinated field, modeling and analysis programs to address these questions. The Panel recognized, however, that present in situ data bases are inadequate to address many of the outstanding scientific issues related to monsoon dynamics. Hence, the Panel recommended that consideration be given to pilot studies designed to enhance the climate data base in the region. It was noted, furthermore, that pilot scale moored measurement programs, appropriately designed, could provide high accuracy time series data of crucial variables needed for studies of large scale tropical ocean-atmosphere interactions. Regions of identified as urgently in need of study were the Bay of Bengal and the equatorial/southern tropical Indian Ocean. Following the close of the TAO Panel meeting, the CLIVAR Monsoon Panel established an ad hoc task group to define specific implementation strategies for pilot studies in the Indian Ocean. The TAO Panel will coordinate with the CLIVAR Monsoon Panel (and also the CLIVAR Upper Ocean Panel which has overlapping responsibilities) in developing these strategies for monsoon related research.
Opening and purpose of the meeting >>
Home | Project overview | Data display | Data delivery | El Niño & La Niña | Site map

TAO Project Office
NOAA
| Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory
7600 Sand Point Way NE
Seattle, WA 981
15
atlasrt@noaa.gov
Credits | Disclaimer | Privacy Policy