Extreme Air Sea Interaction Buoy for Typhoon Conditions

摘要

The long-term goal of this project is to enhance our equipment and instrumentation to measure directly air-sea interaction fluxes and improve our understanding of atmosphere-ocean dynamics in extreme weather conditions, such as typhoons at sea. The principal task of the project is to acquire a new 6-m NOMAD buoy to serve as the basis for our extreme air-sea interaction (EASI) buoy and modify it with suitable instrumentation for measuring marine fluxes. This new system will complement our existing Air-Sea Interaction Spar (ASIS) buoys and allow a wider range of experimental designs and high-resolution marine flux, directional wave, and turbulence measurements in extreme weather conditions, such as those experienced in typhoons. The quest to obtain better and more direct measurements of the air-sea fluxes in storm conditions led to the design of a stable floating platform which allowed measurements of turbulence in the atmospheric and oceanic boundary layers with minimal corrections. The specific objectives of the project are as follows: (1) to test the combination of an ASIS buoy tethered to an EASI buoy in extreme air-sea interaction conditions, (2) to use better measurement strategies and instrumentation that provide high-resolution turbulence and flux measurements near the air-sea interface, and (3) to improve the data acquisition system to allow storage or longer data records and extend autonomous operations to months and more. The combination of an ASIS buoy tethered to an EASI buoy would provide an opportunity to acquire critical turbulence and flux measurements at the air-water interface in typhoon conditions. Similarly, the tandem buoy system would also record the sea state and its directional properties. The Tandem Air-Sea Interaction (TASI) buoy system would provide durable platforms in high sea states and minimal flow distortion.