Need for More Comprehensive Data

Underscoring the notion that not all El Niños are alike and that a multitude of factors are at work, the devastating El Niño of 1982 to 1983 served as a stringent test of the science of computer modeling. Researchers realized that a deeper understanding of El Niño--and any hope of timely prediction--would require a much more systematic and comprehensive set of observations than were available through the programs then in operation. This realization generated a groundswell of support for a major international research effort.

In 1985 the Tropical Ocean-Global Atmosphere (TOGA) program began looking not at the ocean or atmosphere alone but at the interactions between them, all across the Pacific. Sponsored by the United Nations World Climate Research Program, TOGA marked a major attempt to acquire reliable observational data that would support experimental forecasts. It also spurred development of a new generation of observational equipment, such as moored and satellite-tracked drifting buoys capable of taking readings and relaying them via satellites to climate researchers in real time. NOAA scientists in Seattle and collaborators at numerous institutions began monitoring the equatorial Pacific with these buoys, as well as satellites, ships, and tide and temperature gauges. The result was a wealth of data on ocean currents, sea level, and water temperatures from the surface to 500 meters underwater as well as air temperatures, humidity, and wind direction and speed. Today, an invaluable legacy of the 10-year TOGA program is a system of 70 buoys known as the Tropical Atmosphere-Ocean (TAO) array, which continues to collect and transmit vital information on the current state of the equatorial Pacific Ocean and atmosphere.

Servicing an ATLAS (Autonomous Temperature Line Acquisition System) mooring, part of the TAO Array, from the NOAA ship Ka’imimoana in the central equatorial Pacific Ocean. (Photo courtesy NOAA/Environmental Research Labs, Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory)

Location of buoys of TAO Array in the Pacific Ocean. (TAO Project Office/NOAA/PMEL)

Oceanographers seeking to understand the basic physical processes at work in the ocean welcomed the flow of data from the NOAA monitoring program. In the late 1980s researchers at the National Weather Service’s National Meteorological Center in Washington, D.C., combined a realistic model of the ocean with real-time observations to provide a detailed description, on a month-by-month basis, of conditions in the Pacific, thereby allowing oceanographers to gain a more complete view of the ocean's processes.

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