Tropical Moored Buoy System: TAO, TRITON, PIRATA, RAMA (TOGA)
The Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere program (TOGA) is a component of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) aimed specifically at the prediction of climate phenomena on time scales of months to years. In order to achieve the TOGA goals, a strategy of large-scale, long-term monitoring of the upper ocean and the atmosphere has been developed. In particular, several moored bouy projects have been developed. The Global Tropical Moored Buoy Array is a multi-national effort to provide data in real-time for climate research and forecasting. Major components include the TAO/TRITON array in the Pacific, PIRATA in the Atlantic, and RAMA in the Indian Ocean. The TAO array (renamed the TAO/TRITON array on 1 January 2000) consists of approximately 70 moorings in the Tropical Pacific Ocean; PIRATA use ~20 bouys; and, RAMA uses ~23 bouys.
Key Figures
Global Tropical Moored Bouy Array (source: http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/oceansites/images/map_lg.gif)
Monthly time series of salinity at all TAO/TRITON bouy locations along the equator. Image created using the online tool at http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/disdel/disdel-pir.html.
PIRATA: real time download of daily of temperature, wind, dynamic height and temperature with depth (source http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pirata/21n23w.html)
PIRATA: real time download of daily of sea surface temperature, wind components, relative humidity, air temperature ans sea temperature with depth (source http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pirata/21n23w.html)
PIRATA: real time download of daily precipitation. (source http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pirata/21n23w.html)
PIRATA: real time download of daily of radiation (source http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pirata/21n23w.html)
PIRATA: real time download of salinity with depth (source http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pirata/21n23w.html)
PIRATA: real time download of current speed(source http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pirata/21n23w.html)
Other Information
Moored Bouy
- McPhaden et al (2009): The Research Moored Array for African-Asian-Australian Monsoon Analysis and Prediction. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 90, 459-480
- Praveen et al (2012):TropFlux wind stresses over the tropical oceans: evaluation and comparison with other products
- Praveen et al (2012): TropFlux: Air-Sea Fluxes for the Global Tropical Oceans: Description and evaluation. Clim. Dynamics, 38, 1521-1543
- Drushka, KJ et al (2012): In situ observations of Madden–Julian Oscillation mixed layer dynamics in the Indian and Western Pacific Oceans. J. Climate, 25, 2306–2328
- Cronin et al (2012): Ocean reference stations. In Earth Observation, R.B. Rustamov and S.E. Salahova (eds.), InTech
- Prakash et al (2013): Comparison of TRMM Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA)-3B43 version 6 and 7 products with rain gauge data from ocean buoys, Remote Sensing Letters, 4, 677-685
- McPhaden et al (2010): A TOGA retrospective. Oceanography, 23, 86-103