CO₂ Mooring Home
Background
Mission Statement
Projects

Ongoing Projects:

Moored Buoy Systems; @ 155°W, 0°S and 170°W, 2°S
In order to better understand the regional and interannual variability of CO₂ in the equatorial Pacific region, we collaborated with the biogeochemistry group at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), directed by Francisco Chavez and Gernot Friederich, and the TAO Project at PMEL to provide a suite of chemical and biological sensors. These sensors were deployed on the 155°W and 170°W TAO mooring array in the equatorial Pacific in December of 1996. This work leverages on developmental efforts carried out by MBARI and PMEL (with support from NOAA and NASA) over the past several years. The primary objectives of this project are:

1. to determine the relationships between physical forcing, primary production and the exchange of carbon dioxide between ocean and atmosphere;

2. to determine the biological and chemical responses to climatic and ocean variability in the equatorial Pacific;

3. to determine the spatial, seasonal and interannual variability in primary production, carbon dioxide flux and nutrient distributions; and to determine the spatial, seasonal and interannual variability of sea surface pigment distributions to groundtruth SEAWIFS satellite measurements of ocean color.

Moored Buoy Systems @ 125°W, 0°S and 140°W, 0°S
As part of a recently funded expansion of pCO₂ moored buoy project, PMEL has taken the latest prototype MBARI CO₂ system, which utilizes a smaller, more energy efficient detector and has adapted it for the high precision work in the Equatorial Pacific. The primary modification was to add the capability of calibrating the system in the field using a two point calibration.  These sensors were deployed on the 125°W and 140°W TAO mooring array in the equatorial Pacific in September of 2003.