NOAA/ OERD T-Phase Project

First, what is T-Phase? T-Phase or T-wave ( T for Tertiary ) is a acoustic wave generated seismically that propagate over a great distance in the ocean sound channels. The equivalent seismic signals of T-Phase on land will be the Primary (P-) and Secondary (S-)waves. The NOAA/OERD's objective is to collect T-Phase data and monitor the seismic activity of the seafloor.

The T-Phase project was started since 1991. It began to use the U.S. Navy's hydrophones SOSUS arrays to listen the NE Pacific ocean, the Juan de Fuca Ridge area. Since then the NOAA/OERD T-Phase system has been upgraded from non-real-time to real-time (1993) data recording. NOAA/OERD also develops the deployable moored hydrophones by Dr. Haruyoshi Matsumoto to monitor other areas of the Pacific such as East Pacific Rise (since 1995) and Mid-Atlantic Ridge (since 1998). The T-Phase project has extended the study of the Biological Signals such as Blue whale calls. On September 1, 2001, the T-Phase project is also monitoring Pioneer SeaMount, off the coast of central California as part of the NOAA Ocean Explorations program.

NOAA/OERD is the first research agency to establish this fully operational system for monitoring seafloor and ocean activities using military hydrophone arrays and NOAA's moored hydrophones.

My job is to develop programs for processing the T-Phase data. This includes data visualization, locate the T-Phase event's origin, signals identification by mathematical filters, and signal analysis.

Four major programs are developed using IDL with Widget library. All the programs are events driven by users using graphical user interface manuals as shown below.

The picture shows the control panel for the program to process the NOAA's moored T-Phase data. The program contains many options. The following two images show the submanuals of the options Locate the origin of a T-Phase event (in the left) and Signal Analysis (in the right).
Many of these functions are also shared for the second program for processing the Navy T-Phase data.

The third and Fourth programs are used to transfer and display with hardcopies of the Navy's and Pioneer SeaMount T-Phase data in real-time, 24 hours a day. The data are transfered from the Whidbey Island Naval Base in Washington State and Half Moon Bay, California to the NOAA/OERD's office in Newport, Oregon, U.S.A.

The picture below shows the T-Phase data were being displayed while the data were transfered down from Washington to Oregon.

More information of anyone of the pictures above are available by click on the picture.

The NOAA/OERD Research Staff shows the names of my supervisor Dr. Robert Dziak and my co-workers. There are also links to some of the major result from T-Phase detection.