spread widely throughout the western North Atlantic and the Local 

 Dynamics Experiment (LDE), conducted in 1977 and 1978 at about 29°N 

 70°W to provide for a complete and detailed description of a local 

 eddy field. POLYMODE's major field activities are coming to a close 

 and analysis and interpretation of the data are expected to be accomp- 

 lished in 1979-80. 



315. NORTH PACIFIC EXPERIMENT: NORPAX 



A program to study the long-period, large-scale interaction of 

 the oceans and the atmosphere and to understand the processes respon- 

 sible for air/sea coupling in the entire North Pacific, NORPAX was 

 initiated in 1967 under the U.S. Office of Naval Research. Owing to 

 its complexity, it was later cosponsored by the U.S. National Science 

 Foundation and added to the IDOE program. It is now a U.S. project, 

 but other interested nations are asked to participate. 



The program includes the centralizing of a comprehensive data base 

 for the North Pacific that includes bathythermograph and station 

 data from the U.S. National Oceanographic Data Center, marine meteor- 

 ological data from the U.S. National Climatic Center, and sea-level 

 data from the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL). Other 

 sources of data are being sought. 



One of the first of the NORPAX experiments is known as POLE. It 

 covered a limited horizontal area of 200 square miles where intensive 

 vertical samplings were taken to describe the intense wintertime 

 interactions in thorough detail. POLE led to further plans for 

 experiments covering larger areas of the ocean. POLE is a part of a 

 larger program known as the Process Oriented Observation Program 

 (POOP), whose purpose is to gain insight into the processes governing 

 the thermal weather of the upper layer of the North Pacific Ocean. 



Other NORPAX programs include AIRPAX, a field program begun in 1974 

 to take Aircraft Expendable Bathythermographs (AXBT) observations at 

 fixed locations along long. 158° and 170'*W between latitudes 30° and 

 50°N in order to describe and explain qualitatively the observed 

 temporal and spatial fluctuations of the near-surface thermal field; 

 TRANSPAC, a program initiated in 1974 to place observers on commer- 

 cial ships crossing the Pacific to monitor the thermal structure of 

 the mid-latitude Pacific; the Anomaly Dynamics Study (ADS), a program 

 associated with TRANSPAC to study causes of changes in the thermo- 

 cline structure of the Pacific; the Equatorial Dynamics Study (EDS) 

 of the east-west current system in the low-latitude Pacific; and the 

 Atmospheric Climate Study (ACS) to develop statistical/phenomenologi- 

 cal models of the response of the atmospheric circulation to sea- 

 surface temperature anomalies. 



NORPAX' s programs were expanded in 1977, during the First CARP 

 Global Experiment (FGGE), to include investigations of the equatorial 

 Pacific to provide a description of the processes that account for 

 the low-frequency change in the heat content of the surface layer of 

 the tropical Pacific. 



Seabed Assessment Program 



This program is designed to increase the understanding of the geo- 

 logic processes active along the continental margins, the mid-oceanic 

 ridges, and the deep ocean basins that generate raw materials needed 

 by our civilizations. Individual programs are described in entries 

 258 through 261. 



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