Organization:
Research Title: Physical Oceanography & Ocean Modeling
Funding Level (millions of dollars):
| FY94 | 3.7 |
|---|---|
| FY95 | 9.0 |
| FY96 | 7.0 |
Committee on Environment and Natural Resources (CENR) Component:
(a) Subcommittee: Global Change Research Subcommittee (95%)
Water Resources/Coastal and Marine Environments Research Subcommittee (5%)
Task Group on Observations & Data Management
(b) Environmental Issue: Global change: exploratory research with a broad
focus on the
ocean environment (65%)
Natural variability, including seasonal-to-interannual forecasting as well
as past and
future changes in climate (35%)
(c) Research Activity: System structure and function: Understanding (100%)
Organizational Component:
Science Division
Office of Mission to Planet Earth
NASA Headquarters
Washington, DC 20546
Point of Contact:
Donna Blake
Phone: 202-358-4540
Research Goals:
To improve understanding of ocean processes with a major emphasis on
developing
validated data sets from space-borne ocean observations that will be used to
quantitatively
measure climate variations.
Research Description:
The NASA Mission to Planet Earth (MTPE) Physical Oceanography Program has
three
coordinated areas designed to determine the transport of heat, momentum, salt, and
fresh
water in the ocean and through the air/sea interface as well as a component
designed
to
improve future observing systems.
Ocean Circulation. (50%): Altimeter measurements offer the only global observations of the ocean circulation. The very high resolution TOPEX/Poseidon measurements are being used to study climate variability in the tropics, Arctic basin, and in the coastal boundary current regions and to investigate the thermohaline circulation, a major aspect of long-term climate change.
Air/Sea Fluxes. (25%): Measurements of air/sea fluxes are required for ocean global/regional climate models. At present, the predictive capability of couple climate models is limited because they do not give correct air/sea fluxes. The parameters need to determine the global air/sea fluxes are being determined from the space- based observations.
Mean Sea Level Change. (5%): Long term changes in the mean sea level are a measure of global warming or cooling. As satellites have only a 5-7 year lifetime, techniques are being developed to link the observations from different satellites.
Technology and Algorithm Development. (20%): Continual development is needed to produce the future satellite instruments and to improve the quality of present observations by removing biases and errors.
Program Interfaces:
This research program is part of the NASA MTPE program to improve
understanding of
all physical climate processes. Interfaces include:
Committee on Environment and Natural Resources (CENR) Subcommittee on
Global Change; Observations and Data Management Working
Group; United States Global Change Research Program - USGCRP; Tropical Ocean-
Global
Atmosphere - TOGA; Global Ocean-Atmosphere-Land System - GOALS; Global
Ocean Observing System - GOOS; World Climate Research Programme - WCRP;
World
Ocean Climate Experiment - WOCE; Climate Variability and Predictability Program
- CLIVAR
Also, international TOGA; Earth Observing System Distributed Information System
- EOSDIS; Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center - PO.DAAC
Program Milestones:
a) Analysis of the first two years of TOPEX/POSEIDON data have produced the first
synoptic maps of the large-scale general ocean circulation. (b) The eastward advance
of an
equatorial Kelvin wave, which signals the onset of El Niño, was observed in
the
TOPEX/POSEIDON data. (c) The first consistent, high quality surface vector winds
from
the European ERS-1 scatterometer were produced. (d) A polarimetric passive
microwave
radiometer, which appears to be capable of measuring both wind speed and
direction,
has
been developed.
Policy Payoffs:
(a) Spaceborne data sets can be used to quantitatively assess climate variations
in the ocean
circulation, sea-surface temperature, and air-sea fluxes. (b) Improved
instrumentation
and
algorithms for sea-surface winds can result in a cheaper and more accurate wind
measurements for research and real-time weather forecasts. (c) A decade of mean
sea level
measurements will allow a quantitative response to global warming, a subject of
great
social and economic impact, especially on people living in coastal regions of the
world.