Observing System Status Report

D.E.HarrisonOcean Observations Panel for Climate

GODAE STWashington, DC

June 2008

OceanObs2009

• Celebrate a decade of global observing, science and applications progress

• Invite the non-physical variable communities to agree their priorities and capabilities for sustained global observations

• Lay out a community-agreed path for global system activities for the decade ahead

• Lead to “2nd Ed. GCOS-IP” for UNFCCC and GEO

Overview• Global Ocean O.S. remains mostly in research

world hands, motivated by research goals. • Can this be sustained via science community? • Regulatory drivers available? Possible?• R&D and data system challenges, esp. for

system evolution• Good recent progress with ocean analysis and

reanalysis, but much work ahead. GODAE performance metrics in development.

• Ocean climate information development proceeding slowly. Impact in coupled models?

87%

Total in situ networks February 200860%

62%

81%

43%79%48%24%

Initial Global Ocean Observing System for Climate Status against the GCOS Implementation Plan and JCOMM targets

100%

100%

Surface Buoy Obs on GTS March 2008

Sea Level Pressure Buoy Obs on GTS

March 2008

Diurnal Scale Obs

• Feasibility of getting more frequent observations from surface drifters is anticipated.

• Working out implementation wrinkles still.

• Appears difficult to provide within forecast window without major new cost, but available on Svce Argos time frame.

USA Europe Japan Australia India OceanSITES DART

Straw man set of sites that have the potential to become a truly integrated core time series system

U. Send - OceanSites Workshop @EGU 2008

Ocean Temperature Profile Obs on GTS Feb 2008

Some in-situ OS Issues for GODAE

• How are XBT line data used by GODAE?

• Are broadcast mode XBTs useful?

• How are tide gauge obs used?

• How important is boundary current data?

• How useful are surface drifter displacement vectors? Ocean Sites obs?

• Subsurface ocean indices of societal importance are needed.

Sat. Info. Via Mark Drinkwater• Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (ESA/EC contribution

to GEOSS) The GMES Sentinel-1A, -2A, and -3A satellite units are fully approved and now under development.

• Sentinel-1 is C-band SAR with operational ocean & ice applications. Meanwhile Sentinel-3 has SAR altimeter, Ocean colour and ocean temperature (all collocated data streams).

• Currently looking for financing for the successor satellites i.e. recurrent units of Sentinels 1-3, together with additional Sentinels for atmosphere (Sentinel-4 and-5) at our Ministerial Council meeting in November this year.

• Earth Explorers - Research missions GOCE is complete and awaiting launch this summer 08. SMOS development and testing complete - waiting for launch date confirmation (end 2008) CryoSat-2 is almost complete and will be ready for launch next year.

• The remaining 3 approved Explorers (ADM-Aeolus; Swarm; and EarthCARE) are under various stages of implementation

• 6 new Earth Explorers under pre-feasibility Industrial study - results to be available towards the end of this year. ESA will hold a User Consultation Meeting in January -09 to decide on which missions are approved for Phase A study.

Ocean Satellite Status Summary

See CEOS Response to GCOS-IP Report to UNFCCC (2006) for more

Ocean Satellite Status Summary

• Have not been able to find an update to the ‘bar chart’ diagram that was put together as part of the CEOS response to the GCOS-IP.

• Working for Jason-3 approval• Opportunities being investigated w. Indian

and Chinese missions.• Ocean Satellite continuity is very much a

work-in-progress.