Near Real-time Oceanic Glider Mission Viewers Abstract (<350 words) The Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System Regional Association’s (GCOOS-RA) Data and Products Portals were designed to aggregate and integrate data and model output from distributed providers and offer these, and derived products, through a single access point in standardized ways to diverse users. The portals evolved under funding from the NOAA-led U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (U.S. IOOS) Program. In 2013, GCOOS-RA participated in two pilot projects with two different glider platforms. The first project focused on the feasibility of using a Liquid Robotics® (LR) Wave Glider to study ocean acidification. The second used Webb Research® Slocum profile gliders to study hypoxia over the Texas-Louisiana shelf. The first project, led by the University of Southern Mississippi, was a 36-day mission supporting NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Project. The goals were to demonstrate that the Wave Gliders are suitable platforms to monitor ocean-atmosphere fluxes of CO 2 and to give GCOOS-RA the opportunity to develop automated workflows for LR glider data. The second project involved two deployments of a subsurface Teledyne Webb Slocum G2-200m gliders provided by Texas A&M University’s (TAMU) Geochemical Environmental Research Group (GERG); the first during a portion of the August 2013 “Mechanisms Controlling Hypoxia” cruise conducted by the TAMU Department of Oceanography and the second for about 30 days in October. The goals of these two deployments were to test the feasibility of collecting temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen data near the seabed in relatively shallow (20-40m) water, and to compare and validate and merge cruise data with a glider’s information. One important outcome of the pilot projects was the development of a web map application in using ArcGIS web Web Mapping API to show data acquired from the glider deployments with a time slider. Because data sets from the projects were not directly 1
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Near Real-time Oceanic Glider Mission Viewers
Abstract (<350 words)The Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System Regional Association’s (GCOOS-RA) Data and Products Portals were designed to aggregate and integrate data and model output from distributed providers and offer these, and derived products, through a single access point in standardized ways to diverse users. The portals evolved under funding from the NOAA-led U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (U.S. IOOS) Program. In 2013, GCOOS-RA participated in two pilot projects with two different glider platforms. The first project focused on the feasibility of using a Liquid Robotics® (LR) Wave Glider to study ocean acidification. The second used Webb Research® Slocum profile gliders to study hypoxia over the Texas-Louisiana shelf.
The first project, led by the University of Southern Mississippi, was a 36-day mission supporting NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Project. The goals were to demonstrate that the Wave Gliders are suitable platforms to monitor ocean-atmosphere fluxes of CO2 and to give GCOOS-RA the opportunity to develop automated workflows for LR glider data. The second project involved two deployments of a subsurface Teledyne Webb Slocum G2-200m gliders provided by Texas A&M University’s (TAMU) Geochemical Environmental Research Group (GERG); the first during a portion of the August 2013 “Mechanisms Controlling Hypoxia” cruise conducted by the TAMU Department of Oceanography and the second for about 30 days in October. The goals of these two deployments were to test the feasibility of collecting temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen data near the seabed in relatively shallow (20-40m) water, and to compare and validate and merge cruise data with a glider’s information.
One important outcome of the pilot projects was the development of a web map application in using ArcGIS web Web Mapping API to show data acquired from the glider deployments with a time slider. Because data sets from the projects were not directly reported to a GCOOS server, GCOOS-RA had to download and reformat the data to make it GIS-ready. With the ArcGIS Server and Python scripts, a time-aware glider-track layer was automatically generated in enterprise database, and updated in near real-time. This process will be applied to visualize future near real-time observations from all surface and subsurface glider platforms.
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Did the author meant products and data portal?
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. The Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System
a. Profiling gliders monitoring after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
3. The National Context for Gliders: The National Glider Network Plan
4. The GCOOS Approach with Gliders
a. Slocum profiling gliders monitoring Harmful Algal Blooms (Karenia brevis) in
Southwest Florida,
b. Pilot Project 1: A surface Wave Glider monitoring ocean acidification in the
northern Gulf of Mexico, and
c. Pilot Project 2: Slocum profiling gliders being tested in the western Gulf of
Mexico.
5. Lesson Learned and Future Plan
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Introduction
The storytelling article published in the April 1989 issue of Oceanography by the late Dr. Henry
Stommel (Stommel, 1989) prophesied unmanned vessels continuously surveying the world's
oceans while transmitting data daily to researchers. Stommel’s prediction is well on its way to
becoming a reality with increasing glider vehicle technologies and international deployments.
Profiling gliders, long-range autonomous underwater gliding vehicles (AUGVs), offer a means
to collect high-resolution in situ ocean data from a wide range of sensors at a relatively low cost
compared to conventional methods such as vessels and mooring arrays. Profiling gliders can be
buoyancy-driven or propeller-driven and fly underwater in sawtooth pattern collecting horizontal
and vertical profiles of hydrographic conditions. More recently, the Wave Gliders, the first
unmanned autonomous marine robots to generate propulsion using the ocean’s endless supply of
wave energy, have been deployed as platforms from which ocean data are gathered and
communicated in near real-time. Together, these platforms offer unprecedented opportunities to
observe and understand the world ocean.
Compared to traditional ocean sampling methods, gliders offer many benefits. Foremost in a
challenging economy is their cost-effectiveness. Operating gliders demands fewer man-hours
relative to equivalent operations conducted using vessels, and unlike most ship-based equipment,
gliders can be adaptively re-tasked and re-routed to fill data gaps, repeat a transect, or approach
new targets of interest. Increasingly, glider development is moving toward ‘plug and play’
capacity so that the platforms can carry varied and interchangeable instruments that measure and
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Adding an image or graph, though not essential, will help explain this part.
Author, 01/03/-1,
Relative, suggest deletion
evaluate different oceanographic and air/sea interface attributes. This means sensors on the glider
can be swapped out for different measuring devices depending on the needs of each mission.
Recognizing the utility and cost-effectiveness of gliders, the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing
System (U.S. IOOS®) Program has embarked on an effort to outline a National Glider Network
Plan. Data from these mobile platforms are expected to contribute significantly to the growing
demand for sustained observations, needed to address issues ranging from climate change and
severe weather forecasts to ecosystem management and water quality monitoring. For example,
boundary currents such as the Gulf Stream along the eastern seaboard pass through the coastal
ocean and are important drivers of climate change. In the Gulf of Mexico, the Loop Current and
its associated eddies dominate meso-scale circulation and the potential strength and track of
hurricanes entering the Gulf. Gliders in the coastal and nearshore environment also serve many
interests and issues specific to understanding the sources of water entering and exiting the Gulf
shelf and movement of waters (e.g. coastal currents, freshwater runoff) acting as potential
physical controls and drives for the dispersion of pollutants (nonpoint source, oil, etc.), Harmful
Algal Bloom (HAB), and the extent and duration of hypoxia (low bottom dissolved oxygen)
events.
Expanding the use of gliders in the Gulf of Mexico is a necessary step in providing the
geographical coverage and the long-term data needed to support science-based decisions
regarding the ecological health of the Gulf of Mexico. Successful expansion can best be achieved
through collaborative partnerships. It is critical that the Gulf glider community be prepared to
develop the Gulf glider network according to the needs of Gulf stakeholders. The U.S. IOOS®
Regional Associations and partners are heavily engaged in glider operations and, in many
instances, are leading the way on their uses and mission applications. This article describes the
national context and current status of the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System
Regional Association (GCOOS-RA) with regard to acquiring, processing, and delivering ocean
observing and monitoring data acquired from sensors on gliders.
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May require rephrasing and define ‘national context’, i.e. the National Glider Network Plan?
The Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System
The GCOOS-RA is one of 11 regional components of the U.S. IOOS®, a cooperative effort of
federal and non-federal entities to provide new data, tools and forecasts to improve marine
safety, enhance the economy, and protect the U.S. coastal and ocean environment.
Figure 1. Eleven Regional Associations (RAs) of Ocean Observing Systems across the United States. The RAs serve the nation’s coastal communities, including the Great Lakes, the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands and territories. More details.
Because the Gulf of Mexico is a national treasure and an economic driver for the country, there
exists a delicate balance between environmental protection and economic development. All
along the nearly 17,000 miles of shoreline (if bays and other inland waters are included) from
Florida to Texas, there are great demands from industries including commercial and recreational
as for use in the ERMA. These layers were two-dimensional, with metadata, pointers to pre-
computed graphic displays of the associated profile data, and pointers to the actual data. The
GCOOS developed an interactive map showing the gliders’ tracks and temperature and salinity
profiles at glider surfacing.
Figure 2. A web map application displays gliders and floats path and temperature and salinity profiles at their surfacing with a time-slider. This is a part of DeepWater Horizon oil spill response.
This interactive map provided time-aware glider and float layers, which store information about
the changing sate of glider and float over time. This function allows users to track glider and
float paths with a time-slider. Despite important contributions to post-DWH monitoring, data
processing and information distribution, it was an ad hoc system, one that would be greatly
improved with a thoughtful infrastructure in place. Developing monitoring plans need to include