Ocean observing collaboration to improve hurricane forecasting and modeling in the Gulf of Mexico

Ocean Observations in Support of Studies and Forecasts of Tropical and Extratropical Cyclones

“…Since gliders move slowly (about 25 km/day) compared to most atmospheric cyclones O (300 km/day), actively piloting them into the paths of storms is generally not feasible due to the short lead times of forecasts. Thus, sustained deployment of gliders at locations prone to TCs or ECs (e.g., Domingues et al, 2015;Glenn et al, 2016;Perry et al, 2017) or along oceanic boundaries as part of boundary current observing systems (Todd et al, 2018(Todd et al, , 2019Testor et al, 2019) is preferable. Compared to rapid response deployments (e.g., Miles et al, 2015;Goni et al, 2017), sustained glider surveillance has the distinct advantage of providing critical high-resolution observations in the open ocean and over the continental shelf prior to storm arrival; these observations have been shown to improve the representation of the ocean in operational coupled forecast models of hurricane intensity (e.g., Dong et al, 2017).…”

Engaging High School Students and Teachers Through an Ocean-Observing Technology STEM Outreach Club

“…Autonomous in situ sensors are becoming rapidly more advanced and inexpensive, allowing chemical, physical, and biological measurements to be obtained remotely from fixed locations like buoys, pilings, and docks, as well as mobile platforms like ROVs, AUVs, and satellites (Perry et al 2013;Shapiro et al 2014). These sensors typically report regularly to host network systems that perform data management such as logging and filtering, and sometimes providing data to stakeholders and the public via web-accessible-analogous to a weather service for the ocean (Perry et al 2015). In this manner, the ocean-observing system concept is one of a "system of systems" where information from nested sub-systems is aggregated and integrated, so that synergies and economies of scale are generated from nominal investment.…”