Chukchi Sea

1
AOOS Regions Bering Sea / Aleutian
Islands and Arctic
Beaufort Sea
Chukchi Sea
Bering Sea
Unimak Pass (proposed HF Radar location)
2

• Conceptual Design driving questions
• What sensors do we deploy, and where, to improve
  forecasts and meet stakeholder needs?
• What information products do we develop to meet
  stakeholders needs?
• Statewide
• Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands
• Arctic

3

• Conceptual Design
• Further identify user needs
• Archive, display, and distribute data
• Develop and distribute integrated information
  products
• Support model development
• data for initialization and assimilation
• model validation
• Expand observation station network
• Coordinate efforts of partner agencies and users

4

• Conceptual Design
• Statewide
• Data Management and Analysis Group
• continued data acquisition, archival, and display
• model testing and validation (PWS, Cook Inlet,
  Arctic)
• creating custom pages for PWS, Cook Inlet,
  Barrow, Wales, MMS,
• adding myAOOS for individual customization
• restructuring pages to 3-clicks from target
• including Google Analytics to identify best
  pages, growth, user ID
• processing power/speed is our bottleneck (need
  for 20K/year for maintenance and upgrades)
• future need for field agents to work on sensor
  hardware and data feed to the OOS

5
real time station data to AOOS
St. Paul
St. George
Unimak Pass
6
Real time data acquisition via AOOS status page
automatically updates. Red is old and green is
new.
7
from Google Analytics
AOOS web site visitors
8
(No Transcript)
9
(No Transcript)
10
ACIA Sea Ice Projections to 2090
Model Validation
11
ACIA Sea Ice Projections to 2090
Do these distributions look real?
12
Model validation
error
NOGAPS Navy Operational Global Atmospheric
Prediction System
13

• Conceptual Design
• Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands
• Key Issues
• marine safety (navigation, ship icing, and sea
  ice forecasting)
• fisheries sustainability (commercial and
  subsistence)
• coastal erosion/storm surges (monitoring and
  mitigation)
• loss of sea ice habitat
• global climate change
• Response
• provide model surface currents and tides
• current meter moorings along Bering Sea slope and
  Aleutian Passes
• Bering Sea moorings along shelf break (P.
  Stabeno, NOAA PMEL)
• Amutka Pass moorings (P. Stabeno, NOAA PMEL)
• Bering Strait moorings (T. Weingartner, UAF R.
  Woodgate, UW)
• HF radar at Unimak Pass for shipping (proposed)
• additional monitoring at Priblilofs
• add real time ice monitoring from airborne
  surveys
• updated icing algorithm in forecasts
• provide cross-disciplinary, integrated data
  products for

14
Aleutian Islands Existing observing platforms
Bristol Bay
Unimak Pass
15
Bering Sea Existing observing platforms
Point Hope
Bering Strait
Savoonga Airport
16
Example Amukta Pass Moorings, Aleutian Islands

• Moorings across Alaska Stream south of Islands of
  Four Mountains
• T, S, u, v
• Volume transport used for model assessment
• Moorings across Amutka Pass
• Key quantity at important choke point

Bering Sea
Gulf of Alaska
17
Example Bering Sea Moorings (Stabeno, PMEL)
18
Example Bering Strait Moorings

• a critical choke point
• T,S, u, v
• Volume transport
• Freshwater flux
• Nutrient flux
• Model boundary conditions

Bering Sea
19

• Conceptual Design
• Arctic
• Issues
• marine safety (navigation and sea ice
  forecasting)
• loss of sea ice habitat
• coastal erosion
• convergence of subsistence use with oil and gas
  development
• improved bathymetry
• global change
• Response
• collaboration with WRF model researchers on data
  assimilation to improve model forecasts
• acquire ARM and School of Engineering MET station
  data along North Slope
• Sea Ice Radar at Barrow, Nome, other locations
• airborne ice thickness measurements at broad
  scale
• additional sea level measurements along North
  Slope
• tracking big ice floes for marine safety,
  erosion, and whaling
• act as honest broker to stakeholders on
  environmental issues
• irradiance measurements at schools and by local
  providers
• Examples

20
Arctic Region Existing observing platforms
Barrow
Prudhoe Bay
http//ak.aoos.org/op/data.php?regionARCnamemet
21
Stakeholder Needs

• Improved real-time knowledge of
• ocean surface currents, tides, waves, water
  properties
• marine weather (winds, currents) for shipping and
  aviation
• Improved forecasts of
• Coastal weather
• Ocean conditions
• vessel icing, ice concentration, ice thickness,
• freeze and melt times of shorefast ice
• Trajectories of toxic spills and plankton blooms
• Abundance of subsistence and commercial species
• Erosion events and storm surges
• One-stop shopping for historical, real-time, and
  forecast data and information
• Improved nautical and bathymetric charts

22
Key Issues

• Loss of sea ice habitat
• subsistence lifestyle and transportation
• ecological impacts
• Marine Transportation
• safety, efficiency, spill hazard and response
• Subsistence Fisheries
• safety, resource management, climate change
• Tourism and Recreation
• safety, search and rescue, ecological impacts
• Coastal Development
• storm surge risks, coastal erosion, flooding,
  ecological impacts

23
Required Observations

• Dense network of coastal oceanographic and
  meteorological stations
• Bering Sea shelf
• Bering Sea and Aleutian Island passes
• North Slope coasta region sea level
• sea ice radars at Barrow, Nome, Wales
• Dense network of ocean measurements for coastal
  and offshore
• Currents, tides, waves, sea level, temperature
  and salinity and other water properties
• sea level at Barrow, Kaktovik, Prudhoe Bay, Nome
• species abundance for all trophic levels
  affecting commercial and subsistence uses
• Complete database for historical and recent
  hydrographic and shoreline surveys
• Improved/validated forecast models of currents,
  winds, waves, water properties, spill and bloom
  trajectories, shoreline evolution

24
Example Coastal sea-ice radar off Barrow, AK
Hajo Eicken, Geophysical Institute, University of
Alaska
25
Example Future sea ice radar locations
26
Example airborne sea ice thickness measurements
27
Example HF Radar at Prudhoe Bay
28

• Mark Johnson
• Institute of Marine Science
• School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences
• University of Alaska Fairbanks
• 907.474.6933
• johnson_at_ims.uaf.edu