Learn about Ocean Reference Stations (Research Theme I)

Distributed Biological Observatory – Northern Chukchi Integrated Study, PI Robert Pickart, WHOI

The Ocean Reference Station (ORS) project provides sustained observations at three stations in a key region of the ocean – the trade wind region – using surface moorings to collect accurate observations at the sea surface and in the water column. The project contributes to the long-time series: 24 years of sampling at Stratus and 20 years at WHOTS.

Data collections continued for special initiatives, including the OceanSITES deep temperature observing initiative to provide data to better constrain and improve the performance of ocean models, and the PIs are working to facilitate use of the ORS time series by modelers and other researchers.  Another ongoing effort involves merging the surface meteorological and air-sea flux observations to continuous long time series with well-documented accuracies.  These long-time series are essential to assessing the realism of atmospheric models.