Observing the Ocean Environment One Byte at a Time

摘要

In his futuristic and somewhat whimsical article in a 1989 issue of Oceanography,the eminent oceanographer Henry Stommel described what it might be like working in the Slocum Mission Control Center of the World Ocean Observing System.He describes a vision of a facility capable of monitoring the global ocean,using a fleet of small,neutrally buoyant floats dispersed throughout the oceans,providing data sets comparable to those collected by satellites for the surface ocean.These floats would transmit back a variety of real-time oceanographic data to Mission Control Central.As Stommel wrote,"A really new method was needed,one that would provide subsurface data on a scale and at a frequency that matched what remote sensing by satellite provided for the sea surface.Multiplying the number of ships by a factor of 100 was economically out of the question."