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NURC NOMR12 Experiment - MSEAS Home Page

P.F.J. Lermusiaux, P.J. Haley, Jr.,
W.G. Leslie, C. Mirabito

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Center for Ocean Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Cambridge, Massachusetts


Reiner Onken, Baptiste Mourre

NATO Undersea Research Centre
La Spexia, Italy



Exercise Background

Description
In September/October 2012, there will be a major Rapid Environmental Assessment (REA) sea trial in the Gulf of Lion named Noble Mariner 2012 (NOMR12). The objective is to collect a huge CTD data set from CTD, ADCP, drifters, and at least 6 gliders. The plan is for a 5 day long initilization survey with a research vessel and gliders, followed by a 2 week long survey for update and adaptive sampling, and finally a high-resolution validation survey with all available instruments towards the end of the trial. The major intent of the intense oceanographic survey is to provide high resolution data for ocean forecasting and validation of ocean models. The interaction between the NATO Undesea Researcn Centre (NURC) and the MSEAS group continues a long-standing collaborative research effort.

Tentative Schedule
NOMR will have two phases:

  1. REA Phase: 1 - 24 September
  2. Execution Phase: 24 Sep - 7 Oct

Rationale
Predictability is inherently limited in highly dynamic ocean regimes such as coastal and shallow waters, straits, canyons, etc. Uncertainties can remain high because of our yet limited understanding of underlying processes in what appears to be a chaotic environment at short spatio-temporal scales. The lack of integration in observational networks and the monitoring difficulties in these areas may strongly compromise the characterization and prediction of the environment and the objective assessment of operational effectiveness and associated risk. Traditional ship-based experiments become difficult with rising fuel cost and call for innovative and adaptive techniques for persistent autonomous monitoring of the ocean to fill-in areas of high uncertainties.

Objectives
The scientific objective of the environmental program at NURC is to develop an environmental knowledge management system in the following approach:

The aim of the experiment will be to demonstrate and validate these techniques on a range of environmental processes and spatio-temporal scales relevant in an operational context.

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Real-time Data, Analyses and Forecast Pages

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Additional NOMR12 Links

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