Super sites for advancing understanding of the oceanic and atmospheric boundary layers

© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Clayson, C. A., Centurioni, L., Cronin, M. F., Edson, J., Gille, S., Muller-Karger, F., Parfitt, R., Riihimaki, L. D., Smith, S. R., Swart, S., Vandemark, D., Boas, A. B. V., Zappa, C. J., & Zhang, D. Super sites for advancing understanding of the oceanic and atmospheric boundary layers. Marine Technology Society Journal, 55(3), (2021): 144–145, https://doi.org/10.4031/MTSJ.55.3.11.
Air‐sea interactions are critical to large-scale weather and climate predictions because of the ocean's ability to absorb excess atmospheric heat and carbon and regulate exchanges of momentum, water vapor, and other greenhouse gases. These exchanges are controlled by molecular, turbulent, and wave-driven processes in the atmospheric and oceanic boundary layers. Improved understanding and representation of these processes in models are key for increasing Earth system prediction skill, particularly for subseasonal to decadal time scales. Our understanding and ability to model these processes within this coupled system is presently inadequate due in large part to a lack of data: contemporaneous long-term observations from the top of the marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL) to the base of the oceanic mixing layer. We propose the concept of “Super Sites” to provide multi-year suites of measurements at specific locations to simultaneously characterize physical and biogeochemical processes within the coupled boundary layers at high spatial and temporal resolution. Measurements will be made from floating platforms, buoys, towers, and autonomous vehicles, utilizing both in-situ and remote sensors. The engineering challenges and level of coordination, integration, and interoperability required to develop these coupled ocean‐atmosphere Super Sites place them in an “Ocean Shot” class.
NOAA CVP TPOS, Understanding Processes Controlling Near-Surface Salinity in the Tropical Ocean Using Multiscale Coupled Modeling and Analysis, NA18OAR4310402 to CAC and JE. NSF Award PLR-1425989 and OPP-1936222, Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM) to SG. NOAA, BOEM, ONR, NSF, NOPP, NASA Applied Sciences Office, Biodiversity & Ecological Forecasting Program; National Science Foundation (Co-PI J. Pearlman); OceanObs Research Coordination Network (OCE-1728913) to FM-K. NASA, SWOT program, Award # 80NSSC20K1136 to ABVB. NSF, Investigating the Air-Sea Energy Exchange in the presence of Surface Gravity Waves by Measurements of Turbulence Dissipation, Production and Transport, OCE 17-56839; NSF, A Multi-Spectral Thermal Infrared Imaging System for Air-Sea Interaction Research, OCE 20-23678; NSF, Investigating the Relationship Between Ocean Surface Gravity–Capillary Waves, Surface-Layer Hydrodynamics, and Air–Sea Momentum Flux, OCE 20-49579 to CJZ. Partially funded by NOAA/Climate Program Office and the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO) under NOAA Cooperative Agreement NA15OAR4320063 to DZ.