NORTH PACIFIC EXPERIMENT (NORPAX) 



For the past 5 years, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) has 

 been supporting research in the North Pacific to identify oceanic 

 processes relating to anomalous weather conditions. Large areas of 

 abnormally hot or cold sea-surface temperatures (anomalies related 

 to 30- year, monthly-mean values) were identified in the North 

 Pacific; it was postulated that these surface temperature anomalies, 

 via ocean-atmosphere interaction, affect the climate from the Pacific 

 eastward across the entire North American continent. 



It became obvious that the ongoing research effort was insuffici- 

 ent to discover the causes of the environmental phenomena so far 

 identified. Therefore, IDOE and ONR combined resources under 

 an interagency agreement for joint, long-term funding to produce 

 a larger and more comprehensive effort, the North Pacific Experi- 

 ment (NORPAX), than either could support alone. 



As now formulated, NORPAX consists of a scientific effort (in- 

 cluding a visiting scientist program) and five supporting technical 

 programs to: (1) Gather data from island stations, (2) gather data 

 from fixed buoys, (3) gather data from drifting buoys, (4) provide 

 ship support, and (5) archive data for subsequent retrieval from a 

 master data library. 



NORPAX is planned to be carried out in four major operational 

 phases over the next 9 years. Phase-I will take 1V4 years and will 

 involve development of theory and numerical models, test and 

 deployment of a data management system, and establishment of a 

 versatile scientific support program. Phase-II will last 1 year and 

 will principally involve use of the results from the data gathering 

 and scientific support systems. Based on the results and knowledge 

 gained during Phases I and II, the data gathering network will be 

 widened during Phase III, which will require about 1 to IV2 years, 

 depending on the amount of expansion needed. Phase IV, lasting 5 

 years, will involve operation of the data gatherings systems and 

 analysis of the incoming data. 



Still in its formative stage, NORPAX includes scientists from 

 the University of California in Los Angeles, University of Cali- 

 fornia in San Diego, and University of Hawaii. TTie principal in- 

 vestigator for the project is W. Nierenberg of the Scripps Institution 

 of Oceanography. 



NOAA PROJECTS 



Four projects that were initiated by the National Oceanic and 

 Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) prior to 1970 are now being 

 funded under the IDOE Environmental Forecasting Program. 



Ships of Opportunity: Time-Series Expendable Bathythermo- 

 graph Sections, Tropical and North Pacific Ocean 



This NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service project is part of 

 the integrated Pacific Air-Sea Study, conducted by scientists on the 

 Pacific Coast to study many aspects of large-scale, air-sea interac- 

 tion in the Pacific Ocean on a long-term, time-continuous basis. 

 The scientific objective of the NOAA project is to identify and 

 describe seasonal and year-to-year changes of temperature and cir- 

 culation in major currents of the Equatorial and North Pacific 

 Ocean. 



IDOE is supporting a 3-year program to obtain ocean salinity, 

 surface temperature, temperature-vs-depth (expendable bathyther- 

 mograph), and weather observations aboard merchant ships (ships 

 of opportunity). For this purpose, those ships are selected whose 

 routes give repetitive crossings essentially following the prevailing 

 direction of the major currents (fig. 23). Ships sailing four routes — 

 radiating from Honolulu to Cook Inlet, Samoa, San Francisco, and 

 Yokohama — will provide sections across the California Current, 

 Kuroshio, North Pacific Drift, and equatorial currents, respectively. 

 A ship sailing from Los Angeles to Tahiti will prove additional 

 transequatorial sections. 



Temperature-vs-depth observations are digitized automatically 

 aboard ship for radio transmission of BATHY (bathythermograph) 

 messages to the Navy, for computer processing in scientific analyses, 

 and for archiving the data at the National Oceanographic Data 

 Center. The 3-year project will form a base of information and 

 experience for further development for oceanwide environmental 

 monitoring and forecasting. 



In addition to the cruises by the SS Californian and Oreson 

 Standard (listed in the Appendix), expendable bathythermograph 

 data have been obtained between Honolulu and San Francisco, and 

 Honolulu and Japan, by the following ships of opportunity: 



60°- 



40" 



20' 



20°- 



40°- 



• KODIAK 



120° 



150° 



18 



150° 



120° 



FIGURE 23.— Ships of Opportunity: Time-Series 

 Expendable Bathythermograph Sections, Tropical 

 and North Pacific Ocean. 



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