The upgraded Tropical Atmosphere Ocean array will be more robust and able to monitor the ocean below in more detail—potentially allowing earlier and more accurate El Niño forecasts.
For 3 years in a row, cool La Niña conditions have reigned in the tropical Pacific Ocean, suppressing the steady march of global warming. But warm waters are now rolling east and gathering off the west coast of South America, signaling the likely arrival of El Niño later this year and, next year, a surge in heat that could push the planet past 1.5°C of warming. These fluctuations in the Pacific—the greatest short-term control on global climate—once caught the world off guard.
During El Niño, the Pacific trade winds that blow along the equator from east to west weaken, allowing warm water from the western Pacific to flow east; during La Niña, the trade winds strengthen, trapping the warm water in the west and dragging cool water up from the depths in the east. The shifts not only change global ocean and land temperatures, but also reshape weather patterns, fueling flooding and drought as far away as India and Australia.
The TAO overhaul stems from a crisis a decade ago, when NOAA decommissioned the ship that serviced the 5-meter-tall buoys and had trouble financing the replacement of broken ones. Although funding was restored, it prompted a reassessment of what the tropical Pacific observing system, or TPOS, should look like with the advent of satellite observations and the Argo array, a fleet of nearly 4000 drifting, autonomous floats that profile ocean temperatures down to 2000 meters.
NOAA expects to finish deploying the new moorings by 2028, Grissom says. “As far as government time, that’s just right around the corner.” Each will beam back data every 10 minutes rather than once an hour. They’ll be less power hungry and more resilient, allowing engineers to remotely access and reset instrumentation.
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