FY 96 Operating Plan for PMEL

Rebuild Sustainable Fisheries

Objective: Advance Fisheries Predictions

Performance Measure: Improved accuracy of pollock recruitment predictions

Milestone(Q4): Conduct annual survey of early-life-stage pollock and their environment.

Accomplishments: From May 23 to June 1, 1996, FOCI conducted the annual survey of late-stage walleye pollock larvae in Shelikof Strait, Alaska. Nine physicists and biologists from OAR/PMEL and NMFS/AFSC aboard the NOAA Ship Miller Freeman completed 12 CTD casts, 130 plankton tows and collected 187 chlorophyll samples, 102 nutrient samples, 48 microzooplankton samples, 150 plankton samples, and pollock samples. Based on preliminary sample analysis (rough counts), late-stage pollock larvae were relatively evenly distributed over the survey grid extending from the coast to the shelf break and from the Shumagin Islands to the lower end of Shelikof Strait. Larval abundance this year is categorized as average to strong (~450 larvae per 10 square meters).

Milestone(Q4): Provide forecast of pollock recruitment to NMFS.

Accomplishments: On July 31, 1996, PMEL delivered to NMFS a forecast of "average" recruitment for the 1996 year class and a revised forecast of "average" recruitment for the 1995 year class of walleye pollock recruiting to Shelikof Strait, Alaska . The forecast for the 1996 year class was based on four elements, three physical properties, and one biological survey:

1. observed Kodiak rainfall,
2. wind mixing energy at [57N, 156W] computed from sea-level pressure gradient analyses,
3. advection of ocean water in the vicinity of Shelikof Strait as inferred from drogued drifters deployed during the spring of 1996, and
4. rough counts of pollock larvae from a survey conducted during late May 1996.

The revised forecast for the 1995 year class includes estimates of 1-year-old pollock abundance from a spring 1996 hydroacoustic survey of Shelikof Strait.

Objective: Maintain and Improve Observing and Data Delivery Systems--Observing System

Performance Measure: Percent of observing systems operational

Milestone(Q4): Maintain the TAO array portion of the TOGA observing system. The TAO moored array is expected to remain in place for a decade. Each of the 70 moorings in the array will be visited approximately twice yearly for routine inspection, maintenance, or replacement as required.

Accomplishments: The Tropical Atmosphere-Ocean (TAO) Array, consisting of approximately 70 deep-ocean moorings spanning the equatorial Pacific Ocean between 8N and 8S from 95W to 137E, was serviced, maintained, and upgraded. The purpose of the array is to provide high quality, in-situ real-time data in the equatorial Pacific Ocean for short-term climate studies, most notably those relating to the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. TAO measurements consist of surface winds, sea surface temperature, upper ocean temperature and currents, air temperature, and relative humidity. Recently, additional sensors have been added for incoming shortwave radiation, rainfall, and salinity. Data are telemetered in real time via Service Argos, and a subset of these data is placed on the Global Telecommunications System (GTS) for distribution to operational centers for assimilation into weather and climate forecast models. The TAO group participated in 9 different cruises for 261 sea days on 3 different ships in support of the TAO array during FY96. Total number of person days at sea was 665. The new NOAA ship Ka'imimoana, homeported in Honolulu, has been commissioned and is now in service for the maintenance of the TAO array. Data return has been steady during the past year with more than 80% recovery from all sensors. Seventy-three moorings were deployed during the past year by the TAO group, with over 1200 different sensors calibrated before deployment in the field and after recovery. New Next Generation ATLAS moorings are now being introduced into the array. Eight of these new systems were deployed in FY 96 in the equatorial Pacific. Daily data throughput on the GTS continues to be typically about 90%.

TAO data support research efforts at institutions around the world on the causes and consequences of climate variability originating in the tropical Pacific. The number of publications using TAO data continues to grow. Since the beginning of calendar year 1996, 35 refereed journal articles have been either submitted, accepted, or have appeared in print. Work at PMEL during the past year has focused on describing the evolution of these warm events, analyzing the upper ocean heat balance in the western equatorial Pacific at 156E and the central equatorial Pacific at 140W, understanding the air-sea interaction and quantifying surface heat, moisture, and momentum fluxes, detecting equatorial Kelvin waves and Rossby waves, and understanding how these waves mediate the evolution of the warm events.

Objective: Characterize the Forcing Agents of Climate Change

Performance Measure: Reduce the uncertainty in climate forcing by aerosols

Milestone(Q3): Participate in a field campaign to investigate the radiative effects of naturally derived aerosols in the clean Southern Hemisphere. This will provide data and information necessary to reduce uncertainty in the calculation of climate forcing by aerosols.

Milestone(Q3): The first Aerosol Characterization Experiment (ACE-1) of the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry Project (IGAC) was successfully completed on December 15, 1995. The goal of ACE-1 was to document the chemical, physical, and radiative properties, and to determine the controlling processes of aerosols in the remote marine atmosphere. The experiment involved the efforts of over 100 research scientists from 11 countries and included coordinated measurements from the NOAA research vessel Discoverer, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) C-130 aircraft, the Austrailan fisheries research vessel Southern Surveyor, and land-based stations at Cape Grim and Macquarie Island, Australia, and the western coast of New Zealand. NOAA scientists from PMEL, Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory (AOML), Aeronomy Laboratory (AL), and Air Resources Laboratory (ARL) participated in the experiment. Initial highlights of the experimental results include:

• Detailed measurements using state-of-the-art instrumentation of the chemical, physical, radiative, and cloud-nucleating properties of aerosols in a variety of different environments (background marine atmosphere, volcanic plumes of Kilauea, Hawaii, and Mt. Ruapehu, New Zealand, biomass burning, and anthropogenic air masses from Australia). The data set will be used in closure studies to test our ability to calculate radiative and cloud nucleating properties of aerosols on the basis of their chemical and physical size distributions and to develop and test aerosol parameterizations in regional and global climate models.

• Process studies that clearly identify the photochemical formation of new particles in the free troposphere were carried out in the vicinity of both low- and high-level clouds. The particles were mixed into the marine boundary layer after cold frontal passages and during periods of synoptic-scale subsidence and convective mixing between the free troposphere and the marine boundary layer. The ultra-fine particles were regularly observed during these meteorological events on Discoverer and at Cape Grim and Macquarie Island. It is clear from these data that particle formation occurs on large spatial and vertical scales and is not confined to regions of precursor gas emissions.

The first ACE-1 data workshop is scheduled for June 24-28, 1996, to review preliminary results from the experiment and to integrate the combined data set. The understanding gained in ACE-1 will be used to study progressively more complex environments. ACE-1 will extend these studies to the north Atlantic Ocean and focus on the anthropogenic aerosols from the European continent and desert dust from the African continent.

Objective: Understand the Role of the Oceans in Global Change

Performance Measure: Narrow the uncertainty in oceanic uptake in global carbon dioxide budget

Milestone(Q3): Determine the role of the Southern Ocean in sequestering anthropogenic CO2 in a Joint Global Ocean Flux Study/World Ocean Circulation Experiment (JGOFS/WOCE)-related long-lines study. Data collected on the cruise will be used to study the distribution, sources, transport processes, and formation rates of water masses and their flow patterns and time scales. Measurements obtained on this cruise can be used to test and evaluate ocean-atmosphere models and ultimately help improve forecasts of longer-term climate variability.

Accomplishments: NOAA scientists conducted the WOCE P15S cruise to determine the role of the South Pacific Ocean in sequestering anthropogenic CO2 and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) during January-March 1996. The research, which was accomplished in cooperation with the WOCE Hydrographic Program and the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS), was designed to determine the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons along 174E and 170W in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The ship-time support for Discoverer was provided by NOAA's Climate and Global Change (C&GC;) Program. The sections along 174E and 170W provided full water-column CTD/O2 profiles to within 10 m of the bottom at all stations, and provided high-accuracy measurements of a suite of anthropogenic and natural tracers including DIC, alkalinity, pH, dissolved organic carbon and nitrogen, CFCs, carbon tetrachloride, radiocarbon, dissolved oxygen, nutrients, and salinity. In addition, a full suite of biological measurements, including primary production and chlorophyll distributions, was conducted along the full length of the two sections. These measurements are part of the WOCE hydrographic program and JGOFS Global CO2 survey, and will be used to study the distribution, sources, and formation rates of water masses and their flow patterns and time scales. The CFC measurements will be used to study the rates of upper and intermediate water-mass formation and transport processes, and is of particular interest in near-bottom waters where an abyssal signal in Antarctic Bottom Water has been observed. The CO2 measurements will be used to study the exchange of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and ocean and its penetration into the deep ocean via mixing and biogeochemical processes.

These sections fill major gaps in the WOCE program in the southwestern Pacific. The southern end of the sections intersect WHP S4, an E-W section along 67S occupied in 1992. Major features sampled include the western boundary currents and the meridional distribution of water masses throughout the full water column in the southwestern south Pacific. PMEL scientists and colleagues are using these data to:

• determine the sources and sinks of CO2 along the cruise track
• validate models used to predict storage of CO2 and heat in the south Pacific Ocean
• determine the role of dissolved organic matter in the global carbon cycle
• study the invasion of chlorofluorocarbons in the south Pacific Ocean
• provide a high-quality set of baseline measurements for determining decadal-scale changes in circulation patterns in the southwestern Pacific.

Legislative Issues

The 1995 Senate report entitled, " Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Report, was completed and sent to the Senate in March 1995. In July 1995 the Senate Appropriations Committee reacted to the NOAA report by stating:

"The Committee is in agreement with the primary recommendation of the report that a federal/state working group be formed to discuss the 12 NOAA recommendations and write a plan of action."

The Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Implementation Plan was completed in April 1996 and is available at the URL address: www.pmel.noaa.gov/~bernard/contents.html. The first year funding of $2.375 million was appropriated to implement the plan as requested.