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The Tropical Ocean-Global Atmosphere observing system: A decade
of progress
Michael J. McPhaden,1 Antonio J. Busalacchi,2
Robert Cheney,3 Jean-René Donguy,4 Kenneth S. Gage,5
David Halpern,6 Ming Ji,7 Paul Julian,8 Gary
Meyers,9 Gary T. Mitchum,10 Pearn P. Niiler,11
Joel Picaut,12,13 Richard W. Reynolds,7 Neville Smith,14
and Kensuke Takeuchi15
1Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, NOAA, Seattle,
Washington 2NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 3National Ocean Service, NOAA, Silver Spring, Maryland 4Institut Français de Recherche Scientifique pour le Développement
en Coopération, Plouzane, France 5Aeronomy Laboratory, NOAA, Boulder, Colorado 6Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena 7National Centers for Environmental Prediction, NOAA, Camp Springs,
Maryland 8Suitland, Maryland 9Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Tasmania,
Australia 10Department of Marine Science, University of South Florida, Saint
Petersburg 11Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California 12Institut Français de Recherche Scientifique pour le Développement
on Coopération 13Now at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 14Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia 15Institute of Low Temperature Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo,
Japan
A major accomplishment of the recently completed Tropical Ocean-Global Atmosphere
(TOGA) Program was the development of an ocean observing system to support seasonal-to-interannual
climate studies. This paper reviews the scientific motivations for the development
of that observing system, the technological advances that made it possible, and
the scientific advances that resulted from the availability of a significantly
expanded observational database. A primary phenomenological focus of TOGA was
interannual variability of the coupled ocean-atmosphere system associated with
El Niño and the Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Prior to the start of TOGA,
our understanding of the physical processes responsible for the ENSO cycle was
limited, our ability to monitor variability in the tropical oceans was primitive,
and the capability to predict ENSO was nonexistent. TOGA therefore initiated and/or
supported efforts to provide real-time measurements of the following key oceanographic
variables: surface winds, sea surface temperature, subsurface temperature, sea
level and ocean velocity. Specific in situ observational programs developed to
provide these data sets included the Tropical Atmosphere-Ocean (TAO) array of
moored buoys in the Pacific, a surface drifting buoy program, an island and coastal
tide gauge network, and a volunteer observing ship network of expendable bathythermograph
measurements. Complementing these in situ efforts were satellite missions which
provided near-global coverage of surface winds, sea surface temperature, and sea
level. These new TOGA data sets led to fundamental progress in our understanding
of the physical processes responsible for ENSO and to the development of coupled
ocean-atmosphere models for ENSO prediction.
And thorough this distemperature we see the seasons alter...
Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
Act 2, Scene 1