Chapter 6 Australian Participation in GCOS/GOOS/GTOS

Australian Participation in GCOS, GOOS and GTOS > Australian GOOS Activities

Substantial progress has been made on Australian participation in GOOS, with respect to actions on specific observations programs and support for GOOS activities in the Australian region.

IOC Office in Perth

In June 1999, in partnership with the Government of Western Australia (WA) and the Bureau of Meteorology, the IOC established a new regional programme office in Perth. The creation of the Office stemmed from the vision of Dr Roy Green (former CEO of CSIRO) who initiated formal discussions with UNESCO in April 1998. Negotiations during December 1998 resulted in a Memorandum of Understanding between the partners. The IOC Perth regional Programme Office was inaugurated by the Deputy Premier of Western Australia, the Honourable Hendy Cowan, in conjunction with an Office-hosted Indian/Pacific Ocean marine science workshop. The permanent Office Head, Dr William Erb, commenced duties in February 2000.

The mission of the IOC Perth Office "to promote and develop the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) in the Indian Ocean, South West Pacific Ocean, Southern Ocean, and Australia. As time, effort and resources permit, it will also promote and encourage development of other IOC/UNESCO programs and activities in the region, especially where these will contribute to the development of GOOS. It will seek opportunities for partnerships both domestically and internationally to maximize results and resources. The Office will expand with increasing requirements and responsibilities but will not duplicate or replace functions more appropriately assigned to existing agencies and institutes. It will be a catalyst, a bridge and a proponent for the communities and sectors involved in marine science and potential users of marine scientific information and data. Training and outreach conducted with and for countries of the region will contribute to the goal of increasing the understanding and application of marine science for the benefit of future generations."

Since its establishment, the Office has been involved in organising a number of projects and workshops, including the very successful Workshop on Sustained Observations for the Climate of the Indian Ocean (SOCIO). A capacity-building project known as SEREAD (Scientific Educational Resources and Experience Associated with the Deployment of Argo Drifting Floats in the South Pacific Ocean) is also being organised by the Office. This project includes the UNESCO Apia Office and several other sponsors and it is designed to teach secondary school children about oceanography by allowing them to track the movement of the Argo floats using the Internet. Each school involved will adopt a float and learn about the ocean environment through which the float drifts.

During 2002, the Office help organise the the Fifth Session of the Sub-regional Commission for the Western Pacific (WESTPAC) in Fremantle, Western Australia, and played a key role in organising the 1st International Conference on Indian Ocean GOOS, in Mauritius, November 2002. The IOGOOS meeting resulted in the formal establishment of IOGOOS with Australia being represented on the Executive by Dr Neville Smith. The Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO Marine Research and Curtin University, as well as the IOC Perth Office, are all members of IOGOOS. Subsequently, the Perth Office has led several follow-up actions including the formation of an Indian Ocean Panel with CLIVAR (the local contact is Dr Gary Meyers, CSIRO).

In 2002, a Review of the IOC Perth Regional Programme Office was conducted and it returned a very positive endorsement of the work of the Office. On the basis of this Review, the Government of Western Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology (on behalf of the Commonwealth) and IOC agreed to renew the initial agreement and provide support for a further three years, July 2002 - June 2005. A Memorandum of Understanding is being exchanged among the parties and Head of the Office has planned an extensive program of work, mostly centred around the Indian Ocean and Western Australia.

Planning for AOOS

Progress has also been made on the planning for an Australian Ocean Observing System (AOOS) within the context of Australia’s Oceans Policy and Marine Science and Technology Plan. The GOOS Expert Sub-Group (ESG-GOOS) began producing a plan for an Australian Ocean Observing System as a contribution to GOOS in 1994. The ESG also pursued opportunities to establish elements of such a system through input to the development of a Coastal Monitoring Network and to the Oceans Policy and the Marine Science and Technology Plan. In 1997, the GCOS/GOOS/GTOS Joint Working Group decided that the proposed Oceans Policy and the Marine Science and Technology Plan (MSTP) offered the greatest opportunity for implementing an Australian contribution to GOOS and, through all the institutional avenues open to it, the JWG and ESG-GOOS endeavoured to ensure that the Policy and Plan included full consideration of the requirements for ocean observations in their outcomes. The importance of ocean monitoring has been clearly recognised in both the Oceans Policy and the MSTP, with explicit reference to the need to establish an Australian Ocean Observing System (AOOS).

Australia's Oceans Policy was released late in 1998 (Commonwealth of Australia, 1998). It "sets in place the framework for integrated and ecosystem-based planning and management for all of Australia's marine jurisdiction" (see Figure 6.10). The main thrust of the policy is the ecologicallysustainable use of the waters of Australia's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The Policy recognises the need for increased understanding and continued monitoring of our oceans for this purpose and gives the government's support for the development of indicators of ocean environmental health and for the development of an Australian Ocean Observing System (AOOS). The AOOS is included in the Policy’s implementation process under the heading "Understanding the Oceans", and is seen in the context of a system for observing the physical ocean environment.

Figure 6.10. Australia's marine jurisdictional zones.

The Marine Science and Technology Plan (Commonwealth of Australia, 1999) has been developed in parallel with the Oceans Policy and is seen, along with the Marine Industry Development Strategy (Commonwealth of Australia, 1997) of the Australian Marine Industries and Sciences Council (AMISC), as being a "key element of the conservation and resource development focus" of the Policy. The MSTP was officially released in June 1999 and features three programs:

• Understanding the Marine Environment;
• Caring for the Marine Environment; and
• Infrastructure for Understanding and Utilising the Marine Environment.

The first and second programs recognise the need for increased monitoring of all aspects of the marine environment as a high priority. The third program proposes, as its third objective, the development of an AOOS as a means for carrying out this monitoring, specifically, "To implement systematic coordinated and long-term marine observational programs". The plan sees the AOOS as including the biological and chemical environments as well as the physical, and sets it in the international context of GOOS and related programs such as GCOS.

The policy and plan espouse a number of general principles in regard to monitoring the oceans surrounding Australia:

• Long-term monitoring programs are a priority;
• Baseline data series need to be developed to allow an assessment of variability of ecosystems and climate - there is a particular lack of such data for nearshore temperate systems;
• Data must be collected in directed programs, defined by issues and intended outcomes, not on an ad hoc basis;
• There is a requirement for spatially comprehensive chemical, geological and biological data - the oceanographic equivalent of operational meteorological data;
• There should real-time integration of observations in assimilation, analysis and prediction models, again as in operational meteorology; and
• Observations should extend from local to global scales, requiring coordination with regional and global partners - AOOS should be seen as part of GOOS and of regional programs such as a proposed SW Pacific Regional Ocean Observing System.

In July 1999, a meeting was held with representatives of key Australian agencies concerned with marine environment and ocean monitoring (CSIRO Marine Research (CMR); Australian Institute for Marine Science (AIMS); Bureau of Meteorology) to begin planning the Australian Ocean Observing System, consistent with the recommendations of the Oceans Policy and Marine Science and Technology Plan. The meeting recognised the breadth of monitoring projects already operational or scheduled (with funding) to commence that align with the objectives of the Policy and Plan. The proposed approach, therefore, was to identify a core initial set of capacityenabling projects with strong subscription and commitment from participating organisations. These projects can be viewed as both laboratories (for learning what works) as well as templates for a more comprehensive AOOS that could be built up over time.

The Pilot Projects nominated for development of an AOOS were:

• Extended monitoring of the coastal zone - Target Southeastern Australia as a logical expansion of the monitoring activities already in place for the North West Shelf and the Great Barrier Reef.
• Australian Argo and Climate Prediction - Contribute to Argo through deployment of profiling floats in the eastern Indian Ocean, and use the data in a coupled atmosphere-ocean model for El Niño prediction.
• Multi-disciplinary Ship-of-Opportunity Monitoring - Explore multi-disciplinary biogeochemical monitoring on merchant vessels operating in the Australian region.
• GODAE and Remote Sensing - Advance processing and utilisation of satellite ocean data, with a view to providing long-term surety of remotely-sensed data sets, and produce enhanced analyses of Sea Surface Temperatures (SST), sea surface winds, sea state, ocean color and surface topography.
• Baseline Data Sets and Climatologies - Develop maps of climatologies and associated statistics for key variables at a resolution commensurate with Australia's interests in the EEZ.
• An Integrated and Multi-disciplinary Approach to Climate Change Monitoring - Develop a project to improve climate change monitoring on the basis of existing observations programs and data sets.

Much of this work is being undertaken or coordinated by the Joint (CMR/BMRC) Australian Facility for Ocean Observing Systems (JAFOOS).

COOE

A key component of the planning for an AOOS is the Cooperative Ocean Observing Experiment (COOE), an initiative of CSIRO Marine Research. COOE capitalises on a range of recent technological developments in satellite and in situ instrumentation, and supercomputing, and draws on the cooperative efforts of Australia's marine agencies. The Experiment has three core elements:

• satellite measurements of the ocean, including sea surface height, wind stress, temperature and colour;
• in situ observations of temperature and salinity to 2000m with free drifting floats, and direct measurements of chemical and biological parameters with volunteer observing ships; and
• maps of ocean properties and simulations of oceanic conditions in near realtime realtime with a fine-scale ocean model.

Pilot experiments to demonstrate the feasibility of COOE commenced in 1999. To date, ten autonomous profiling floats have been deployed in the northeast Indian Ocean. The floats are programmed for an 'Argo' mission: that is to drift at 2000m and profile to the surface every ten days, measuring temperature and salinity at 50 depths.

The current status of the floats is posted on the CSIRO Marine Research (CMR) website at: www.per.marine.csiro.au/cooe/float_status.html. Over the next three years, CMR plans to maintain the array of ten floats off the northwest coast of Australia and, in collaboration with the Bureau of Meteorology, to extend the array further south, with approximately 30 extra floats to be deployed off the west Australian coast.

An instrument package for measuring and logging temperature, salinity, fluorescence and phytoplankton was installed on the merchant vessel P&O Nedlloyd Brisbane on 28 November, 1999. The package ran continuously, collecting data on four completed voyages circumnavigating Australia, until the ship was taken off route in October 2000. A CSIRO scientist travelled on the vessel approximately one-third of the time, calibrating and servicing instruments, and collecting phytoplankton samples.