Adopt-a-Drifter Deployment

NOAA scientists are shown here deploying an ocean drifter from the back of a ship. NOAA’s Global Drifter Program (GDP) maintains an array of over 1,000 drifting buoys that measure air pressure over the ocean and send these data to satellites passing overhead, which then transmit the data within an hour to the forecasters. Drifters are deployed by national and international partners of the GDP, coordinated by the GDP’s Drifter Operations Center at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory (AOML). The data are then processed and quality controlled at the GDP’s Data Assembly Center, also located at AOML.