The course for a round the world regatta leads the boats through the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic, Southern Indian and South Pacific Oceans. On their voyage, the skippers come across a large variety of oceanographic situations: strong currents, floating ice, wave formations of every kind and biological diversity. In this course the student will learn about the foundations of the science of oceanography. You'll learn about the classification and formation of the ocean floor, how current sea satellite analysis systems work, the chemistry of the oceans and the processes that led to its formation. To follow this course does not require previous knowledge of oceanography.
3.5.3 Video Operational oceanography
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From the course by Universitat de Barcelona
Oceanography: a key to better understand our world
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From the lesson
3B. Satellite oceanography: All eyes on the planet (II)
This new module will expand the study of oceanography satellite, and microwave as for obtaining information are used. What are they and what is the importance of active sensors. And finally, other applications of satellites and their importance.
Meet the Instructors
Jordi SerraDr.
Grupo de Geociencias Marinas
[MUSIC]
Now, we'll see a few examples of operational oceanography systems.
The first one is the Mediterranean Forecasting System Pilot Project.
This was an European joint effort that started in 1998 and
funded by the European Union Marine Science and Technology Program.
This project aimed at designing and
testing an operational system for the Mediterranean Sea.
Here, you will see now a few slides from a presentation made
in March 2003 by the project coordinator,
Dr. Nadia Pinardi from Italy, on the results of this project.
The objective was to see what was the visibility of
building such an operational system.
Because we wanted to have the capability of describing through observations and
forecasting the behavior of the entire Mediterranean eco system.
You see here what were the different components of the project
and observing system.
A forecasting system with numerical models, and
then calibration and validation of these models.
First, physical models.
Then were couple to biochemical models.
The main components of the observing system
that had the characteristic of being a near realtime system.
That is transmitting the data just after being made, the observations and
then this data reaching the center where it had to be analyzed and processed.
First, we had some buoys, more buoys that were
collecting information on different parameters.
This information was transmitted through the main buoy through for
example, underwater links.
And this buoy collected all of the information from oceanographic and
meteorological variables.
And was transmitting this data every three hours to a satellite.
And this satellite was sending the data to the operational center.
This way, with just one day of delay, the data were ready to be processed.
Second component were a few voluntary observing ships.
These ships are collecting data through regular lines, for example, ferry lines.
And they were performing vertical provides of temperature down to 700 meters.
And with a separation of 12 nautical miles along the line of the base.
This information was also transmitted through a satellite
link in such a way that with just a delay of one day,
the data was also ready for analysis.
And the third component of the observing
system were information from satellites.
One site altimeter measurements from TOPEX/Poseidon and ERS-2 satellites.
Data along the tracks of the satellite was also available with a delay of one day.
The second component of the remote sensing system was
the generation of weekly sea surface temperature maps.
This was collecting information for several satellite messages and
every three days one map was generated containing the data of the last week.
This is the overall system that allowed making forecasts tn
the sense that once a week the system was assimilating all data.
Then numerical models were run and
the forecast was made for the following ten days.
And this had steps of one week, was the way this operational system being run.
Now we'll see one example of the kind of products that were generated
operationally.
This is the surface circulation,
the currents at 1 meter depth in the Alboran Sea.
You can see,
here the evolution of the structures that we observe in the Alboran Sea.
And that you may remember from what we saw in one of
the first sessions of this module.
The second example is related to another kind of oppression of systems.
Systems that are designed to be active under emergency situations.
The objective is to make available all the information and
all the capability of analyzing the information to make decisions
on how to deal with this emergency situations.
In this case, we go back again to one of the examples,
I have shown in previous sessions.
The disaster of the prestige tanker.
This tanker was sunk after being broken in two
of the Northwest Spanish Coasts in November 2002, due to a violent storm.
And this tanker was releasing 76,000
cubic meters of oil into the sea.
So the situation was a real emergency because part of this oil was
reaching the coast.
And then a system was rapidly organized using several kinds of resources.
And also taking advantage of the experience of some French,
Portuguese, and US agencies that were used to deal with some kind of situations.
So the components of this system were a serious
observation of capabilities, remote sensing data.
Satellites were providing information of different kinds of variables.
A few scenographic cruise that it symbols when to see to make
measurements around the area.
Several buoys that were released and were drifting on the surface
mainly to obtain information on the surface current.
And there were also some surveys from airplanes and
helicopters that were running on the area.
Taking care of making different kind of observations that could be relevant for
the management of the situation.
And then parallel to this, that we call here data management,
all these data are concentrated in some specific place.
Then there were some ocean modelings, ocean models, sorry, that were describing
the evolution of the system mainly from the current's point of view.
There were other models for example,
forecasts on the waves that were generated due to the wind.
And with everything, with all these components,
a specific model was added that is to forecast the evolution of the oil spills.
Where the spills will go, to what direction, how they will spread, etc?
With all these information, a geographical information system was organized.
And this was made available to the agencies that had to
take the decisions, to make decisions on how to react
to avoid the damage that this accident was producing.
Here, you see couple of the models of buoys that were released in this occasion.
And here, you see the tragic stories of several of these buoys.
Here is the point where the tanker sank, and
these are a couple of buoys that were released.
Other buoys were released close to the coast and head trajectories
indicated that the direction of motion was into the Bay of Biscay.
And other buoys were released in the Bay of Biscay itself to
understand what was the motion of this.
And these buoys were very useful to check
whether the American models were predicting correct motion or not.
Here, you see three examples, sorry,
four examples of buoys where the dots, the colored
dots indicate the successive position of the buoys that were tracked by satellite.
And then the lines are the predicted trajectories.
So the buoys were used to validate the output of the models and
also to provide information to improve this model.
Here, we have the last part of the forecast.
What will be the fate of these oil spills?
In this case in the Bay of Biscay, we have on the 29th of January,
that is a couple of months after the accident.
There were still some oil spills in this area.
So these model square predicting where these spills will go,
what part of the cost could be impacted by the spill.
And here we see the tragic stories of several bouys for
the same days that were used to check the accuracy of the prediction of the model.
Now, we see another example of operational system for
the management of potential disasters.
This is the tsunami warning system in the Indian ocean.
This was set up under the organization of the intergovernmental
oceanographic commission after the disaster
of the tsunami of Sumatra in Christmas 2004.
The system has several components, a series of observational components
through instruments at the bottom of the ocean ordering buoys,
some information are framed from satellite.
And everything is transmitted by satellite to operational centers
that are able to analyze this information, to run for cast models.
And when there is the risk of a tsunami, they can warn.
They can send alerts to different authorities that are in
charge of the regional and local management in such a way that
the population can be warned about the immediacy of one of these tsunamis.
This is not an operational system, but is a numerical model made afterwards.
This represents the evolution of the sea surface
after the earthquake that generated that tsunami,
that Sumatra tsunami in Christmas 2004.
You see here depicted in blue and
red the sea level above and below the main sea level.
And how the waves were propagating into
the Indian ocean until reaching in five hours.
The Indian coast, and other coasts in the area.
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