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New Funded Projects in Support of Ocean Observations & Climate Science

New Funded Projects in Support of Ocean Observations & Climate Science

Fiscal Year 2021

On October 12, 2021, NOAA’s Climate Program Office announced a total of $171 million in funding awards to support 72 innovative and impactful projects that will improve our nation’s resilience at a critical time in the fight against the climate crisis. This is the highest five-year investment in the program’s history. The Climate Program Office’s divisions for Climate Observations and Monitoring and Climate Variability and Predictability have partnered with the Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing (GOMO) Program to provide support for 12 three year projects in Fiscal Year 2021. These 12 projects aim to increase the use and value of ocean observations, advance our understanding of climate variability and change, and enhance NOAA’s ability to model and predict the Earth System. Specifically, GOMO is supporting two projects that will advance the biogeochemical mission of the Argo Program (described below). Read the full funded projects announcement. These new funded projects are also included in a White House release announcing the Biden Administration’s support for climate information and decision tools. 

  • Biogeochemical Argo Calibration Algorithms

    • Biogeochemical (BGC) Argo floats have great potential to revolutionize the collection of data to monitor the ocean carbon cycle as well as ongoing climate changes in the ocean such as global ocean warming and acidification. However, the expanding array of BGC Argo floats relies on data products built from ongoing hydrographic investigations for calibration and validation.  This project will develop new and expanded data products from these and other studies that will help to realize the full potential of the BGC float observing strategy.

    • PI: Brendan Carter, University of Washington

    • Co-PI(s): Richard Feely, Andrea Fassbender, Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL)

    • search is underway for a postdoctoral scholar to collaborate with the PIs on developing these data products using machine learning approaches. Applications are open until November 30, 2021.

  • Biogeochemical Argo Synthesis Products of Oxygen, Nitrate, and pH for Increased Community Utilization of Autonomous Profiling Observations

    • Argo is a global array of temperature and salinity profiling floats. In addition to core Argo temperature and salinity sensors, Biogeochemical Argo profiling floats carry a suite of biogeochemical sensors to measure changes in ocean chemistry, including those caused by the human-induced increase in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Although there are various floats equipped with biogeochemical sensors monitoring the oceans, there are no unified float datasets that integrate all observations. This project will assess and adjust observations from the international BGC Argo float database to produce an internally consistent global database for scientific use.

    • PI: Seth Bushinsky, University of Hawaii at Manoa

    • Co-PI(s): Nancy Williams, University of South Florida; Andrea Fassbender, NOAA / Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL)