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Report by the Programme Coordinators Mayra Pazos Global Drifter Program

Update on ISABP report by NOAA/AOML and South African Weather Service on barometric buoy deployments, challenges, and new opportunities for 2010. Discusses regional deployments and battery life issues.

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Report by the Programme Coordinators Mayra Pazos Global Drifter Program

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  1. Global Drifter Program NOAA/AOMLMiami, Florida, USAISABP – 13Buenos Aires, ArgentinaApril 19, 2010Mayra Pazos

  2. Report by the Programme Coordinators Mayra Pazos Global Drifter Program NOAA/AOML, Miami, Florida, USA. and Shine Lithakazi Mkatshwa Antarctic & Islands and Drifting Weather Buoys South African Weather Service , South Africa

  3. Shine L. Mkatshwa presented the report of the ISABP at the DBCP 24th Session meeting that was hosted by the South African Weather Service in Cape Town in October 2008. • Points that were praised: • Increase in the numbers of barometric buoys deployed • Increase in data products • ISABP recommendation on conducting studies in evaluating impacts of drifter pressure data on Numerical Weather Prediction models. • Issue of concern: • Regular occurrence of failure on deployments, and wondered if this was a manufacturer dependant issue. • Mayra Pazos presented the ISABP report to the 25th DBCP session that took place in Paris, October 2009. The Panel was excited to see the increase in deployments in the Bay of Bengal and Gulf of Guinea regions, as well as the plans of the Brazilian DHN in cooperation of the Brazilian Navy to increase the number of deployments they carry out in the South Atlantic region during 2010.

  4. Operations • Cooperation and coordination between participants have continued during the intersessional period: • Equipment (drifters) storage • Deployment opportunities • Communications • GDP continued upgrade opportunity from basic SVP to SVPB • Data dissemination and archiving (in real time through GTS and historical sets) • GTS monitoring (removal of bad data from GTS) • Besides drifters, a network of fixed stations and profiling floats exist in the area, all providing data in real time via GTS.

  5. One-week segments drifter tracks Drogued buoys: Undrogued buoys: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/dac/dacdata.html

  6. One-week segments drifter tracks Drogued buoys: Undrogued buoys:

  7. Status of the South Atlantic Drifter Array The number of barometer drifters include those upgraded by participating countries

  8. AX-8 Deployments in the Tropical Atlantic (20°S – 30°N) During the last two years, deployments in areas difficult to populate due to lack of deployment opportunities, were possible thanks to: R/V Endeavor R/V Explorer (Semester at Sea)USS Nashville (US Navy’s Africa Partnership Station, to promote ocean awareness in African Nations) Participants from West African Nations carried out drifter, XBT and Argo float deployments

  9. Deployments in the Extra Tropical Atlantic (40°S – 20°S) Deployments by Brazilian Navy March –April 2009 Note: not many deployments needed to maintain array here: this is a convergence region.

  10. Deployments in the Southern Atlantic (60°S – 40°S) Extra 28 buoys deployed south of –60 in cooperation with NOAA fisheries and Texas A & M.

  11. (March) Deployments in the region 2000-2010 • Argentina deployed a total of 9 drifters between December 2009 and February 2010, they belonged to an old batch built in 2006, three from Clearwater, 6 from Technocean. They are all transmitting OK. There are still 7 waiting to be deployed. • Brazil deployed a total of 64 drifters during 2009, and has deployed 20 drifters Jan-Mar 2010. Unfortunately only 10 of the 2010 deployments are transmitting after deployment. AOML contacted the manufacturer and after checking the battery voltage, it showed batteries are nearly spent. The manufacturer said that the problem with long storage times is that there is no way to ensure that the conditions will be ideal for prolonged battery life. These were manufactured in April 2008 and shipped to Brazilian Naval commission on June 2008. There are only 8 left from this old batch, the remaining ~95 are from newer batches

  12. New deployment opportunities • The Brazilian DHN confirmed the availability of ship time to deploy 125 drifters in 2010, with the support of the Brazilian Navy vessels in the area. 100 of those are SVPs donated by GDP and 25 will be upgraded to SVPB by DHN. Most of these deployments will be in the Tropical Atlantic, with a small number falling in the Extra Tropical region. • The US Navy’s African Partnership Station’s (APS) second and third missions ( March 2009 and March 2010), have allowed the deployment of SVP drifters off the coast of Senegal, Gulf of Guinea and Indian Ocean, areas hard to reach otherwise. • Hardly a new opportunity, but considering the issues the Agulhas suffered last season, and her inability to cruise, this season has proved what an asset she is in deployments in the region. SAWS’s drifter deployments account for a large portion of the S. Atlantic, so the return of the Agulhas will have a huge impact in the 2010 season and beyond.

  13. Argentina started deployments in December 2009 • South Africa will continue to work with other groups in the region to expand the buoy network in the area • During the intersessional period, there has been increased participation from the island communities of Tristan da Cunha and the Falklands, (Malvinas). Tristan da Cunha has been participating actively in the program, deploying drifters throughout the year from their fisheries vessel • The SAWS’ PMO is now playing a bigger role in actively finding deployment opportunities, as well as increasing the VOS fleet. As a result of this effort, he has been able to arrange more deployments, but they have been mostly in the Indian Ocean region • There has been a greater uptake in the Iridium Pilot Project by SAWS

  14. Crash of Air France flight# 447 on May 31, 2009 in route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris NE of Fernando de Norohna Islands. Several drifters were found in the vecinity of the crash. AOML/DAC was contacted by colleagues from IFREMER, France, and Brazilian Navy to obtain trajectories from these drifters to estimate how far the currents had carried floating debris from the crash site. Six more drifters were deployed in the area on June 14th by the Brazilian Navy. Drifter position on May 31 First discovery of debris on Jun 2 Debris found on June 2 Importance of Drifters: Drifters in area of plane crash Shading shows microwave SST

  15. Capacity Building • Capacity building efforts by the US Navy have continued. (First mission was in 2008). • During the second mission, on March 2009, two scientists from AOML participated. Dr. Rick Lumpkin and Dr. Claudia Smidth trained participants on how to perform data analysis using data from various instruments and how to use Octave, a software package similar to Matlab to process and analyze data. • The third mission is going on right now, March 2010. This time, capacity building has been extended to participants from the Western African countries. Scientists from NOAA fisheries are on board the vessel to teach them and address fisheries issues, they are also being trained on vessel and port operations, as well as carrying out deployments of different instruments (drifters, gliders, floats, XBT, etc.)This effort will capacitate these nations to participate farther.

  16. DBCP Capacity Building • The first IOC-WMO Data Buoy Cooperation Panel (DBCP) in-region Western Indian Ocean capacity building workshop will take place in Cape Town, South Africa on April 19-23, 2010. The theme of the workshop is: “Implementation and Operations Of Indian Ocean Data Buoy Networks and their Applications for Enhancing Regional Predictive Capability”

  17. New Developments • The SAWS has acquired 5 Iridium drifters and will be deploying them as part of the DBCP Iridium Pilot Project. Two has been already deployed: • IMEI # 481500 deployed on December 15, 2009 at 500 00’S, 01024’E • IMEI # 486510 (with GPS) deployed on January 25, 2010 at 52059.3’S, 33059.3’W Challenges • Since December 2008, the Polarstern, the German ice-breaker, has been carrying out its Antarctic research work during the Austral summer in the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean. The Polarstern deployment was a very helpful and always dependable as they periodically visited the Drake Passage which was great deployment position for buoys, as they would track eastwards along the Antarctic Circumpolar current, covering the volatile southern reaches of the Atlantic very well. It appears though that she will be returning to the Atlantic sector in the 2010/2011 austral summer season

  18. New Member During this intersessional period Servicio de Oceanografia, Hidrografia y Meteorologia de la Armada (SOHMA) from Uruguay joined ISABP

  19. TC Mission while attending ISABP Find drifter 67890, transmitting from: 34.621S, 58.356W since at least December 2009 to present and put magnet back on to stop transmissions!

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