Chris Sabine

1. Chris Sabine Bluewater Node of IMOS Susan Wijffels, Ken Ridgway, Anthony Richardson, Eric Schulz, Bronte Tilbrook and the rest of the Bluewater Team

2. 3 major themes identified at the June workshop • Ocean Variability and Climate Change • Bio-Physical Coupling • Boundary Current/Shelf Interactions • Gas Hydrates and Biosphere (IODP)

3. Bluewater: Observational Needs for Research Major research questions: • What is the role of the ocean in weather, climate variability and change? • What role does the ocean play in setting atmospheric carbon levels? • Where and how does ocean and climate variability impact on pelagic ecosystems, their productivity and fisheries? • How do large-scale offshore changes affect our coastal environment and ecosystems? • Is there predictability in the system and where? On what timescales?

4. Bluewater: Observational Needs for Research • satellite sea-level, SST, ocean colour, winds: sustained and with cal/val. • broad-scale ocean structure: sustained • broad-scale ecosystem structure: sustained • broad-scale BGC measurements: sustained • boundary currents and associated eddy system, interfaced with a shelf array • detailed carbon budget studies

5. Modelling/integration Needs for Research • Global data-assimilating ocean and atmospheric models • Earth simulators • Detailed regional models – both coupled and uncoupled • BGC and ecosystem models We need strong links and to coordinate with these activities to fully exploit IMOS and to help improve its impact and design.

6. Approach • Identified gaps in network and those most urgent to fill • Built on existing demonstrated national capacities • reduce risk and ensure quick roll-out • expect high success rate in most elements • Expand system across disciplines and ecosystem components • Select elements well integrated into international programs • Strive for real-time systems • needed for growing national capacity in ocean reanalysis and forecasting • resulting gridded fields will greatly expand uptake by the research community

7. Argo: a means of tracking the slow large-scale structure of the upper 2000m 150m global temperature analysis from Neville Smith at BMRC: http://www.bom.gov.au/bmrc/ocean/results/

8. Argo: a means of tracking the slow large-scale structure of the upper 2000m May 2006/2007 Indian Ocean Dipole and El Nino – best measured yet! July Sept. Nov Jan

9. IMOS Argo • 50 T/S Argo floats per year (assuming a continuation of existing contributions from AGO, CSIRO and BoM) • Prospect for some oxygen deployments via supplementary funding from CSIRO (yet to be confirmed)

10. Air-sea fluxes: critical but poorly known Heat flux out of the ocean in W/m2 Grist and Josey (2006) NOC1.1a surface heat flux climatology – based on best marine surface observations, most recent bulk formulae and adjusted to fit large-scale ocean constraints

11. Air-sea fluxes: so which do you force an ocean model with or use to validate a coupled model? WHOI OA ERA40 NCEP1 Calibrated satellite obs. Atm. Reanalysis Atm. Reanalysis

12. IMOS Surface fluxes: providing high-quality validation data sets • We face a dearth of validation in the oceans around Australia and particularly in southern high-latitudes • IMOS will: • Instrument RV Aurora Australia and RV Southern Surveyor with high-quality marine meteorological suite and radiation measurements • Establish a flux-measuring surface mooring at the Southern Ocean Time Series (SOTS) site

13. Major Current Systems Influence Region • Advective component of ocean heat/salt budget and complements Argo’s storage measurements • strong intraseasonal to interannual variability • water mass variability little known • climate change e.g. EAC strengthening and warming? Do we have direct evidence?

14. Monitoring regional currents from SOOP • Eastern, western & southern Boundary Currents, northern shelf regions, GBR • coastal to basin-width – transport resolving • seasonal to decadal – does not resolve submonthly timescales (eddy processes) • Real-time and delayed mode • Temperature only

15. Eddy resolving WBC monitoring is missing • need to fill the crucial gap between offshore large-scale processes and onshelf conditions • get T as well as S and v • plan for pilot IMOS Bluewater Glider deployments needs to be developed

16. Regime Shifts and Ecological Impacts: we see hints in our region but sufficient data is rare. Compare with long series collected in the North Atlantic Standardised anomaly plots SST Phytoplankton Colour Dinoflagellates Diatoms Edwards et al. (2006) L&O

17. Climate Change: Cod Collapse Beaugrand et al. (2003) Nature

18. Summer only Multidisciplinary Underway Network: AusCPR and BGC Underway Observing System • enhance and broaden existing underway measurement programs using commercial and research ships of opportunity (SOOP) • establish phytoplankton and zooplankton and basic BGC measurements on ship of opportunity lines providing national coverage for the first time Plankton, T, S & Fl XBT - T(x, z) PCO2

19. Research Enabled • Links between planktonic ecosystem structure and large-scale physical variability • Links between ocean ML chemistry and uptake of gases and large-scale physical variability • Validation/development data sets for BGC and ecosystem models

20. Critical Sites for Detailed Local Measurements Moored Phys-Chem-Bio Observatory in the Australian Sub Antarctic – for quantifying Southern Ocean influence on global carbon balance, impacts of acidification, controls on productivity, calibration of remote sensing - builds on existing ACE CRC and SOOP programs

21. IMOS Bluewater - a myriad of research applications • Dynamics and predictability of seasonal climate variability • Ocean’s role in global heat balance • Climate Change fingerprinting • Sea level rise • Ocean circulation and dynamics • Air/sea interaction • Dynamics and predictability of intraseasonal variability • Biogeochemical/Ecosystem Model Development • Carbon uptake • Ocean acidification • Climate change impacts on physics, chemistry and biology • Remote sensing validation • Marine Biodiversity • Ecosystem Health • Biogeochemical and Biological Oceanography • Fisheries Oceanography • Marine conservation • Dispersal of marine pests • Ecology of pelagic and coastal species • …..

22. Issues • Integration with coastal/regional nodes • Outreach – data availability key along with gridded products. • eMII is core function – we all need to make it work – IMOS will live and die by its presence on the web and data uptake • WBC’s remain a big challeng

23. END • Thanks