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IOOS^® - EYES ON THE OCEAN^™

From the IOOS Program Office:

• Planning for MTS/IEEE OCEANS’15 Washington DC: US IOOS will participate in this conference once again. The US IOOS Program Office has secured 2 booths and will be looking for community engagement. We are committed to the ever popular IGNITE session – as we did in Norfolk, and have discussed townhall topics – potentially in coordination with the Maritime Alliance based on the Ocean Enterprise study. Abstract submissions are now open and I call on all of you to submit one: http://www.oceans15mtsieeewashington.org/index.php/program/abstract-submission Abstract submissions will close in late May.
• IOOS Federal Advisory Committee: Next meeting will be held April 29-30 at the Consortium for Ocean Leadership in Washington, DC. Russell Callender, NOS Assistant Administrator, Steve Stockton (USACE), Eric Lindstrom and Bob Houtman (IOOC Co-Chairs), and Josie Quintrell (IOOS Association) are all on the agenda to speak. Draft Agenda now posted: http://www.ioos.noaa.gov/advisorycommittee/welcome.html
• Thank you from NOS Assistant Administrator to PacIOOS: Russell Callender, on a visit to Hawaii, with PacIOOS and the University of Hawaii, Marine Biological Lab participated in Tiger Shark tagging. Thanks from Russell: “Melissa (PacIOOS Deputy) was really gracious to take the time to set this up and to answer all my questions.  Carl’s team from the University of HI with top notch scientists and doing some very innovative work.  All very solid and professional. I really appreciated their willingness to take us out and show us firsthand what they are doing.” Thank you for the aloha hospitality.

Observation Subsystem and Sensor Technologies:

• HF Radar (IOOS national coordinator, Jack Harlan; Jack.Harlan@noaa.gov):
  • No update.

• Glider Activity: NOAA’s National Coastal Centers for Ocean Science’s Tim Battista is running a glider in the Caribbean in partnership with the Naval Oceanographic Office and are working with US IOOS Program to display their glider. The data will be provided at the completion of the mission, but in the meantime they are sharing position reports and the glider can be seen here.
• CO-­OPS Improves Data Quality by Installing New Microwave Sensors: NOAA, National Ocean Service Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services (CO-OPS) has started transitioning to operations the next generation state­ of ­the ­art Microwave Water Level (MWWL) sensors for the National Water Level Observation Network (NWLON). These sensors do not make contact with the water and are superior to previous acoustic technology used by CO-­OPS. They are cost effective, eliminating the need for diving and underwater cleaning of support structures (such as clamps, pilings) and do not involve corrosion or dissimilar metal effects for underwater components, resulting in additional savings. Currently CO­-OPS has installed MWWL sensors at ten NWLON stations, and plans to transition 148 of the tidal NWLON stations to this new technology over the next 12 years. The two most recent stations that were updated are the NWLON station in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico which replaces the NWLON station in Aguadilla that was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy in 2012; and the NWLON in Wachapreague, VA. For more information, contact Manoj.Samant@noaa.gov or David.Lane@noaa.gov.
• Invitation to join the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Jubilee in the Northern Gulf of Mexico, 13-17 July 2015: The University of Southern Mississippi and the Naval Research Laboratory, together with Rutgers University, are hosting an AUV Jubilee in the northern Gulf of Mexico on 13-17 July, 2015. The mission of the Jubilee is to conduct a coordinated field demonstration of ocean observing technologies focused in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Join in this cooperative effort to coordinate disparate individual ocean research efforts and characterize ocean processes in the Gulf. The Jubliee will also include an educational component aimed at middle school, high school, and community college science teachers. Learn more at http://gcoos.org.

Data Management and Communications (DMAC) Subsystem and Tools Built on IOOS data:

(Contact Derrick or Rob to get on the list serve for changes - Derrick.Snowden@noaa.gov, Rob.Ragsdale@noaa.gov):

• IOOS DMAC Meeting is May 27 - 29 in Silver Spring: The IOOS RA DMAC reps will meet to talk about archiving, QARTOD, and certification.  Presentations include the Glider DAC, Marine BON and IOOS Biological data, and a modeling skill assessment project.   Want to attend? Contact Ragsdale@noaa.gov for more information.
• QARTOD
  • Heads Up: Ocean Optics QC manual: Will be distributed for comments to NOAA, IOOS and International Community later this week.
  • Dissolved Nutrients manual - The request to potential committee members was completed and emailed to eighteen individuals, and reference documents are being gathered and reviewed.
• AOOS New Data Portal Features: Upgrades include the ability to change the color and resolution on legends, and search for data using geography, time period, or access method. At right, note the option of a bounding box to limit data queries to a specific region. This feature can be found under “advanced search options”.
• PacIOOS Voyager updates: Now Three Times Faster! Now has an expanded underwater cables layer that originally only extended to the main Hawaiian Islands. The overlay was replaced with a Web Map Service (WMS) provided by NOAA's Office for Coastal Management (OCM), which covers the coastal and offshore regions of the entire United States, as well as Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The underwater cables layer also includes cables reaching into the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Johnston Atoll, Palymra Atoll, Kingman Reef and the continental United States. In addition, Voyager now provides a coastline overlay, which can be found under the navigation, geographic boundaries drop-down.

Modeling and Analysis Subsystem:

(IOOS PO and IOOS Coastal and Ocean Modeling Testbed (COMT) POC – Becky Baltes (Becky.Baltes@noaa.gov):

• 2014-2015 Pacific Anomalies Science and Technology Workshop: Unusual ocean weather and climate patterns have been observed throughout 2014 and early 2015 across the North Pacific basin. Areas of the North Pacific have been as much as 5⁰C warmer than average, earning the nickname ‘the Blob’, and is affecting weather and climate patterns. Extreme conditions in physical and biogeochemical parameters are occurring in many locations, and appear to be impacting pelagic ecosystems, including fisheries. Plans are underway for a workshop on the North Pacific Ocean temperature anomaly and associated conditions. This is the first of a two part series, with the first workshop to be held in San Diego at Scripps on May 5-6, 2015 focusing on what is being observed, and the second will focus on causative factors. The May workshop is being developed by the five Pacific regional ocean observing systems AOOS, NANOOS, CeNCOOS, SCCOOS, and PacIOOS), the IOOS office, IOOC, and the NOAA Climate Program Office. Visit, http://sccoos.org/ to register, submit an abstract or to be included in future communications on this topic.
• Warm blob, cool App! View the anomalous Pacific seawater temperatures in NANOOS’ new “Climatology App”: A new web application developed by the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems (NANOOS) has been created to try to address questions related to the temperature anomaly. The Climatology App is available here: http://nvs.nanoos.org/Climatology. Within the Climatology app, you can click on a buoy icon and view the normal (aka “climatology”) seasonal water temperature, its typical variation on a monthly basis (shown by 1 and 2 standard deviations), and the currently measured data. The plots show that the present data’s departure from normal (aka “anomaly”) is quite large!

Interagency and International Collaboration/News:

• A fresh new look for the IMOS OceanCurrent website: Check out IMOS’ new OceanCurrent website at http://oceancurrent.imos.org.au/. The website's fresh new look and user-friendly navigation provides ready access to up to date ocean information around Australia, including geostrophic current, sea surface temperature and chlorophyll-a. For help, information and to provide feedback about IMOS OceanCurrent please contact info@emii.org.au.
• Persons wishing to attend the meeting must register no later than 5 PM EDT on the evening before each presentation by sending an email to Caitlin.Gould@noaa.gov. Each meeting is limited to 500 participants and is on a first-come, first-served basis.  Individuals are encouraged to submit comments and questions in advance of and following each webinar, via e-mail (IWG-HABHRCA@noaa.gov) or to Caitlin Gould at NOAA, National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, SSMC-4, #8234, 1305 East-West Highway, Silver Spring, MD 20910.

  The Interagency Working Group on HABHRCA is hosting a series of regional webinars - about harmful algal blooms (HABs) and hypoxia. The webinars will initiate conversation between federal representatives and stakeholders on topics related to HABs and hypoxia, some of the most complex and economically damaging issues affecting our ability to protect the health of our nation’s coastal and freshwater ecosystems. Dates/times are below:

  • Regional Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Webinar –Inland/ Great Lakes – April 22, 2015, 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM EDT
  • Regional Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Webinar –Northwest – April 29, 2015, 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EDT (11:00 AM - 12:00 PM PDT)
  • Regional Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Webinar – Northeast– April 30, 2015, 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM EDT

Delivering Benefits:

• CARICOOS General Assembly: Well attended by an enthusiastic group that was updated on the exciting work over the past year. My thanks to Jorge Corredor for his outstanding leadership as the Council Chairman. He said it best – CARICOOS has come from an idea to a robust presence in the NE Caribbean. For the full story see: http://www.ioos.noaa.gov/ioos_in_action/stories/caricoos_general_assembly.html. My presentation is posted here: http://www.ioos.noaa.gov/communications/presentations/welcome.html.
• Coastal Geotools 2014 (http://coastalgeotools.org/program/): Derrick attended the Coastal Geotools conference and gave two presentations. On the Monday before the meeting, a series of “Special Interest Meetings” were convened and Derrick was a speaker and panelist at the SIM titled “Innovative Approaches in Coastal and Ocean Data Portals”. Additionally, Derrick gave an overview presentation on IOOS Data Services in a session titled “Advances in Federal Data Services”. The presentation will be available on the web this week.  The conference was focused on tools and techniques for delivering products and services to the coastal management and planning communities. Typically this community is served by derived products that are static in nature. Tools capable of dealing with the 4D nature of the ocean and atmosphere have not been traditionally part of the coastal planner information toolbox. From a technology perspective, this is changing and the traditional GIS community and the ocean/atmosphere obs/modeling data management technologies are converging. Further convergence of the community of users will require communications efforts from both communities. Storytelling and stakeholder communications were important themes of the conference, stressing the need to educate communities about resources available to them.
• PacIOOS – Water Quality in Mamala Bay: In collaboration with the City and County of Honolulu, Division of Environmental Quality, PacIOOS now features the Mamala Bay Study. The purpose of the Mamala Bay Study was to observe the physical, chemical, biological and geophysical nature of Mamala Bay and surrounding areas in an effort to detect influences from point and non-point source pollution.
• Seabirds, Sentinels of Marine Climate Change: The Farallon Institute has been conducting seabird surveys on fisheries research vessels by highly trained observers that make bird counts. This project is supported by SCCOOS and the California Current Ecosystem Long-Term Ecological Research Project and investigates changes in abundance, distribution and spatial organization. We encourage you to check out the reports on the SCCOOS website, https://sccoos.org/, to learn more about how birds have been put forth as reliable ecological indicators of coupled physical-ecological change. Additional information is also available through the Farallon Institute, http://www.faralloninstitute.org/index.php

Congressional

• CO-­OPS Briefs Senator Mikulski on Nuisance Flooding: Sen Barbara Mikulski visited the NOAA Silver Spring campus on March 31st, and CO-­OPS’ Dr. Billy Sweet gave her a presentation on nuisance flooding. Dr. Sweet explained how sea level rise (SLR) has caused flooding impacts above the National Weather Service ­defined local flood thresholds that are established at the NOAA tide gauge in Annapolis. He showed Sen Mikulski the rapid increases of annual "nuisance" flooding that will occur under the local SLR projections based upon the IPCC scenarios of global climate change. She also received presentations on environmental intelligence data collection, weather forecasting improvements and performance during winter 2014­2015, and the Fisheries’ Seafood Inspection Program. For more information, contact William.sweet@noaa.gov

Communications / Outreach / Education:

• Holly Bamford featured in Marine Technology: http://digitalmagazines.marinelink.com/nwm/MarineTechnology/201503/
• Penobscot Bay pilot briefs Congress on oceanographic buoys: http://www.ellsworthamerican.com/maine-news/waterfront/penobscot-bay-pilot-briefs-congress-on-oceanographic-buoys
• S. and Mexican Scientists Improving Research and Response Collaborations in the Gulf of Mexico. http://www.newswise.com/articles/u-s-and-mexican-scientists-improving-research-and-response-collaborations-in-the-gulf-of-mexico
• Antarctic Edge: 70° South: Two sold out screenings at the Princeton Environmental Film Festival- CONGRATS. Catch the film at the following locations:
  • For one week only – opening 17 April - Quad Cinemas - New York City, 34 W. 13th St (between 6th & 7th Aves) • www.quadcinema.com 212-255-2243 • Show times: 1:00, 3:00, 5:00, 7:00, 9:00 For Group ticket sales: quadcinema@aol.com. Meet Director Dena Seidel and Special guests: Friday at 7:00pm; Saturday at 5:00pm and 7:pm
  • 15 May at the Laemmle Music Hall in Beverly Hills.

Upcoming Meetings with IOOS Participation:

• 2nd GEO_CIEHLYC Water-Cycle Capacity Building Workshop: Colleagues of the GEO community in the Americas. The meeting will take place in Cartagena, Colombia in May 2015. Detailed information can be found here: http://www.earthobservations.org/article.php?id=71. Registration is now open! Register here!
• OTN-hosted International Conference on Fish Telemetry (13-17 July): Registration closes in May. Taking place for the first time in North America, the 3rd ICFT will present the latest aquatic-animal telemetry research under emerging topics like transboundary issues, visualization and modeling, and intelligent open-access data. This year’s conference is hosted by the Ocean Tracking Network and will be held at the World Trade and Convention Centre, Halifax, Canada. Registration is open. Join the mailing listto track ICFT news.
• Gordon Research Conference 2015: IOOS partners – Drs John Wilkin and Ruoying He are the Chair and Vice Chair respectively for the conference “Modeling Coastal Marine Circulation and Physics and the Environmental Processes that They Influence” The conference will take place June 7-12, 2015 at the University of New England, Biddeford, ME. The program is linked at https://www.grc.org/programs.aspx?id=12785. Applications for this meeting must be submitted by May 10, 2015. Please apply early, as some meetings become oversubscribed (full) before this deadline. The Coastal Ocean Modeling Gordon Research Conference will be held in conjunction with the Coastal Ocean Modeling Gordon-Kenan Research Seminar. Those interested in attending both meetings must submit an application for the GKRS in addition to an application for the GRC.

View the IOOS calendar: https://ioosassociation.org/