Publication Date:
2022-05-26
Description:
The surface mooring component of the NOAA Pan American Climate Study (PACS) took place from April 1997 to September 1998
in the eastern tropical Pacific. PACS was a NOAA funded study with the goal of investigating links between sea surface temperature
variability in the tropical oceans near the Americas and climate over the American continents. Two air-sea interaction surface
moorings were deployed along 125°W, spanning a strong meridional sea-surface temperature gradient. One mooring site was located
in the cold tongue south of the equator, and the other site was in the region of warm ocean found north of the equator, near the
northernmost summer location of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. The moorings were deployed to improve our understanding of
air-sea fluxes and the procsses that control the evolution of the sea surface temperature field in the region.
Four air-sea interaction buoys were deployed to occupy two sites for a period of 17 months. The sites were along 125°W near 3°S and
10°N. The Upper Ocean Processes Group at WHOI deployed the first two moorings in April 1997. These moorings were replaced
with a second pair of moorings in December 1997. The final recovery occurred in September 1998. Each of these buoys on these
moorings were equipped with meteorological instrumentation, including a Vector Averaging Wind Recorder (VAWR) and an
Improved METeorological (IMET) system. The moorings also carried Vector Measuring Current Meters (VMCMS), single point
temperature recorders and a few conductivity sensors on the mooring line to monitor the upper 200m of the ocean. In addition to the
traditional instruments, several other experimental instruments were deployed with limited success on the mooring line including
acoustic current meters, acoustic rain gauges and bio-optical instrument packages.
This report describes the instrumentation deployed on the PACS surface moorings, along with information on the processing and
quality control of the returned data. It presents a detailed overview of the meteorological and physical oceanographic data including
time series plots, statistics and spectra of key parameters. It also presents analysis of the estimated air-sea heat, moisture and
momentum fluxes.
Description:
Funding was provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Contract No.
NA96GP0428.
Keywords:
Air-sea interaction
;
Moored instrument measurements
;
PACS: eastern tropical Pacific
;
Roger Revelle (Ship) Cruise
;
Thomas G. Thompson (Ship) Cruise
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Technical Report
Format:
7428827 bytes
Format:
application/pdf
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