Cooperative Projects

The TAO Project welcomes the opportunity to develop cooperative and/or collaborative research projects that build upon the moored measurement infrastructure (including ship support) established by PMEL over the past two decades in support of climate studies. Investigators wishing to pursue field work that contributes to, enhances, or otherwise builds upon the existing array, should contact the TAO Project Office prior to formal submission of any proposals to national or international funding agencies. Plans for collaborative and/or of cooperative field work will be reviewed by the Project Office and (depending on the scope of the proposed work) by the International TAO Implementation Panel to determine its feasibility based on current technical and logistic constraints, and its compatibility with TAO programmatic objectives.

More Information International TAO Implementation Panel TAO Project Contacts

The primary mission of the NOAA Ship KA'IMIMOANA is the servicing of the TAO array of moored buoys which span the equatorial Pacific. The KA'IMIMOANA services the TAO buoys in the eastern and central portion of the TAO array from 95W to 165E between 8N and 8S. The regular schedule of servicing required for the buoys offers a unique opportunity for underway programs to collect repeated meridional sections across the Pacific and also allows both cooperation and collaborative programs an opportunity to work these remote areas of the equatorial Pacific as time permits on the TAO cruises.

Some of the ancillary programs that utilize the resources of the KA'IMIMOANA include the CO2 group from PMEL, which installed and maintains an automated CO2 system to monitor surface water pCO2 continuously; NOAA's VENTS program, which maintains hydrophone moorings along the 95W and 110W meridians to monitor seismicity along the East Pacific Rise; Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and EqPROBES group from PMEL sponsor chemical, biological and biooptical sensors on selected TAO moorings; Scripps Institute of Oceanography deploys deep ocean drifters along 155W; Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washinon provides acoustic rain gauges at several TAO sites; and Bloomsburg University PA conducts an ongoing census of population density and species of marine barnacles collected from recovered TAO moorings. See the TAO Collaborative Research page for more information on additional cooperative work with TAO.

More Information VENTS Autonmous Underwater Hydrophone Array Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute PMEL's CO2 group