BLUElink and GODAE

Global Ocean Data Assimilation Project

The BLUElink> initiative will be a milestone for Australian oceanographers who, with European and US ocean science and earth observing teams, have achieved significant advances in oceans research in the past two decades.

This included development of the array of moorings across the Pacific Ocean to indicate the onset of El Niño or La Niña conditions.

The BLUElink> initiative builds on the Oceanographic and Meteorological Assimilation System, a collaborative effort between CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology and the Royal Australian Navy. Dr Schiller and Dr Neville Smith, from the Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre, are project principal investigators.

Dr Smith heads up an international project, with centres in the United States, France and elsewhere around the globe, to provide operational forecasting for a range of environmental and industrial purposes. The Australian initiative will be developed concurrently with the International Global Ocean Data Assimilation Project, called GODAE.

The first 4-6 day forecasts are expected to be available by 2005/2006.

One of the most complex issues facing scientists will be to assimilate all the different streams of data into a single computer model, which can then deliver recognisable and realistic forecasts for industry and the community.

Information obtained from instruments and satellites will be processed by high performance computing centres in Melbourne and Hobart, together with historical data collected since 1900.

"Our objective will be to forecast what is likely to be happening at or near the ocean surface and in the upper two kilometres of the ocean.

"To achieve this, Australia is reliant on the flow of information from American and European satellites and instruments deployed in our region by several countries, as well as our own instruments," Dr Schiller said.

Key influences on ocean prediction are regional ocean currents, including the East Australian and Leeuwin Currents, the Indonesian throughflow that drains the Pacific into the Indian Ocean, and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current in the Southern Ocean.

Earth observing satellites, Topex/Poseidon and its successor Jason-1, operated by NASA and its French equivalent CNES, and the European Space Agency’s ERS-2 will be mainstays of the observing network, together with subsurface observations made by commercial shipping and an array of robotic profiling floats being deployed around Australia.

Australia led a pilot program as part of the international Argo project with the deployment in 1999 of 10 robotic profiling floats north west of Australia. These floats provide information on temperature and salinity to a depth of 2,000 metres every 10 days. There are currently 25 robotic floats deployed by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology in an international pilot program, called Argo, with others planned for deployment in the next two to three years, including 40 in the Southern Ocean. As at June 2003, some 850 floats have been deployed globally by the international partners of Argo. Optimum coverage will only be achieved with around 3000 floats.