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Founded in 1876, Texas A&M University is a U.S. public and comprehensive university offering a wide variety of academic programs far beyond its original label of agricultural and mechanical trainings. It is one of the few institutions holding triple federal designations as a land-, sea- and ...
A type of wind that occurs when the pressure gradient is balanced by the force of friction. These are the atmospheric analogs of Poisseuille flow.
Industry:Earth science
A front, often abbreviated as ABF, caused by the confluence of the southward flowing Angola Current and the northward flowing Benguela Current near 16° S off the African coast. This can be identified in the temperature of the upper 50 m and in the salinity to at least 200 m.
Industry:Earth science
Self-nourishing organisms with the ability to synthesize organic molecules from CO<sup>2</sup> using either photosynthesis or chemosynthesis.
Industry:Earth science
The RAFOS floats that surface at regular intervals throughout their lifetime and transmit data via satellite.
Industry:Earth science
An experiment designed to study the development of the boundary layer in the trade winds near the ITCZ. It was conducted in 1969 and based on a triangle of ships drifting with the NE trades. Spatial structures of the boundary layer were gathered. Air-sea fluxes were measured by the profile method and the eddy correlation technique was used on two separate buoys, i.e. a stable, wave-following buoy for profiles and a servo-stabilized buoy for eddy fluxes.
Industry:Earth science
A deep submersible named after Allyn Vine commissioned on June 5, 1964 at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. It has been used for over a thousand research and rescue missions in the years since it was first launched, most from aboard the tender ship Atlantis II, which was retired from that duty in 1996.
Industry:Earth science
A component of ACSYS whose objectives are:
* to assemble a climatological archive which documents the state of pack ice in both the Arctic and Antarctic seas; and
* to study the interaction of polar pack ice with other elements of the global climate system.
The elements of the implementation strategy include:
* assembling a climatology of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice based on available historical observations and new observing initiations within ACSYS;
* determining the southward flux of pack ice;
* studying the processes by which pack ice, the ocean and the atmosphere interact; and
* studying sea ice mechanics at spatial scales (>1 km) relevant to its behavior in a geophysical context.
Industry:Earth science
An ongoing research program that exploits the twice-annual passage of the RRS James Clark Ross between the U. K. and the Falkland Islands - before and after its use in the Antarctic research program in the Austral Summer - to obtain spatially-intensive time and space series data over the 13,500 km transect. The transect starts at the U. K. and heads southwest to the first waypoint at a JGOFS time-series station at 47°N, 20°W. From there it follows the 20°W meridian to 13°N, after which it heads south and west to Montevideo (Uruguay) and Stanley (Falkland Islands).
The objectives of the AMT program include:
* gauging the effects of anthropogenically induced environmental change * improving knowledge of marine biogeochemical processes, ecosystem dynamics, food webs and fisheries, as well as characterize physical and biogeochemical provinces;
* developing a research strategy to integrate shipboard measurements with remote sensing, modeling, etc. to maximally exploit the time and space series obtained on the transect;
* providing calibration and validation of satellite sensors of ocean color, sea surface temperature, and solar radiation;
* quantifying ecosystem responses to changes in the abundance of radiatively and chemically active trace gases; and
* developing coupled physical-biological models of production and ecosystem dynamics.
The progress and limitations of AMT as of 2000 has been synthesized by Aiken et al. (2000) as:
AMT cruises 1 to 7 (1995-1998) have seen the completion of phase 1 of the AMT programme, wherein many of the new, autonomous technologies and operational approaches have been pioneered and proven. There are obvious limitations in the programme, particularly one which has objectives related to issues of climate change. Notably, the physical oceanography is superficial, CTD casts have been limited to 200 m in most cases with no geostrophic reference and the spatial resolution of circa 400 km from typically 1 cast per day is too coarse. As a basin scale programme the AMT samples the temperate N. Atlantic poorly; there is no sampling north of 50°N. As a programme focused on climate change, a time series based on samples only twice a year has severe limitations, with no adequate resolution of the seasonal cycle in any province. Nevertheless, the fledgling four-year time series can already provide measurements of inter-annual variability, which is an essential pre-requisite for any study of decadal trends. With another 10 cruises planned over five years (1999-2003) during phase 2, the basis of a study of climate change will be well established. During this period there must be a focus on those measurements that are sensitive to climate forcing or are known indices of anthropogenic influences on climate. Collaboration with other European national research activities is planned to improve the coverage of the seasonal cycle in the north Atlantic and create a European Atlantic Time and Space Series (EATSS) project. Core to this are the twice yearly transects of the other Antarctic research vessels, the Polarstern (Germany), the Hesperides (Spain) and the Pelagia (Netherlands) with opportunistic research cruises in the area 20-63°N, 20°W, by UK, German, French, Dutch, Belgian and Spanish vessels. If this develops, it will be true to say, that the AMT programme has laid down the foundation for a study of decadal trends in the marine ecosystems of the Atlantic Ocean with which to understand and model their responses to climate change.
Industry:Earth science
The region on either side of the equator between the islands of the Indonesian archipelago. This has the most complicated topography of any of the regional seas of the world, consisting of a series of deep basins with limited interconnections, each characterized by its own type of bottom water of great age. The basins comprising this include the Banda, Sulawesi (formerly Celebes), Molucca, Halmahera, Serman, Sulu, Flores, Java and Sawu Seas, with the Banda being the largest and deepest.
The net transport is believed to be westward at all times, from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, with a maximum in August (estimated at 12-20 Sv) and a minimum in February (estimated at 2-5 Sv). It takes the form of a western boundary current that is strongest along Mindanao and and Kalimantan. The transport also occurs mainly in the upper layers with little transport below 500 m and about 75% above 150 m. Most of the high salinity input occurs across the sill between the Pacific and the Sulawesi Sea, while most of the low salinity output is through various narrow passages between the south Indonesian islands, with both input and output occurring over the entire water depth over the sills.
The freshening of the throughput occurs due to both high freshwater input from seasonal precipitation and to strong turbulent mixing that effects water mass conversion in the upper 1000 m of the water column, with the turbulence probably due to locally strong tidal currents. This mixing process imparts a unique character to the Australasian Mediterranean in that the salinity field in the upper 1000 m is nearly homogeneous while the temperature field is still stratified. This occurs because even though both temperature and salinity are strongly mixed the intense solar heating in the region serves to maintain the temperature stratification.
Industry:Earth science
A surface current that flows along the northwestern side of the Bering Sea and on through the Bering Strait. It is mostly seasonally invariant with a velocity of about 0. 3 m/s.
Industry:Earth science
