Moored Instruments Weather Arabian Sea Monsoons, Yield Data

For more informat ion, c o n t a c t E t i enne Ruellan, CNRS, G e o s c i e n c e s Azur, 2 5 0 Rue A. Ein­ stein, S o p h i a Antipolis , 0 6 5 6 0 V a l b o n n e , F r a n c e (e-mai l r ue l l an@fa i l l e . un i ce . f r ) . The five elements of the moored array were set in a 50-km 2 pattern centered at 15°30'N, 61°30'E. The central mooring was the most heavily instrumented. Two meteoro­ logical packages aboard the buoy measured wind velocity, incoming shortwave and long­ wave radiation, barometric pressure, air tem­ perature, sea temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation. Subsurface instrumenta­ tion included current meters and sensors to measure temperature, salinity, f luorescence, oxygen, photosynthetically available radia­ tion, and light transmission. The vertical reso­ lution of some of these variables was finer than 5 m near the surface. The east side of the moored array was composed of two sub­ surface moorings, each carrying a profiling current meter. By profiling vertically every 4 hours, the profiling current meters measured water velocity, temperature, and salinity in 5m bins. The two western moorings were light­ weight surface moorings carrying m e t e o r o l o g i c a l sensors , a c o u s t i c Doppler current profilers (ADCPs) and tempera­ ture recorders . The m o o r e d array was de­ s igned to resolve hor izonta l gradients of ocean ic quantities and thus to calculate advection. Our moorings were set as part of the Ara­ bian Sea Experiment, sponsored by the Of­ fice of Naval Research (ONR). Other measurement programs in the experiment in­ cluded the surveying of the upper ocean us­ ing towed vehicles and the shipboard profiling of various physical, biological, and chemical variables. Aircraft and satellite ob­ servations, and modeling activities comple­ mented the in situ measurements. Related experiments included the Arabian Sea Expe­ dition of the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS) and the Indian Ocean component of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE), both sponsored by the National Sci­ ence Foundation (NSF).