IMOS SOOP-Air Sea Flux (ASF) sub facility

Enhancement of Measurements on Ships of Opportunity (SOOP)-Air Sea Flux sub-facility collects underway meteorological and oceanographic observations during scientific and Antarctic resupply voyages in the oceans adjacent to Australia. Data products are quality controlled observations, and bulk air-sea fluxes.

Research Vessel Real Time Air-Sea Fluxes, aims to equip the Marine National Facility (MNF) (Research Vessel Southern Surveyor) and the Research and Supply Vessel, Aurora Australis with "climate quality" meteorological measurement systems, capable of providing high quality air-sea flux measurements and delivered to researchers on a near real-time basis. Obtaining the full set of air-sea fluxes essential for climate studies requires observations of: wind, air and sea temperature, humidity, pressure, precipitation, long- and short-wave radiation. The existing ship meteorological sensor sets have been completed with IMOS instruments and a comprehensive annual calibration programs implemented. The ships have dual sets of radiometers, temperature and humidity sensors, precipitation gauges (optical rain gauge and Siphon gauge) and anemometers (2-d sonic and prop/vane - Southern Surveyor only) . The Aurora Australis will be fitted with two long-wave radiometers and one ORG (serviced during winter port time). Data streams are fed into the existing ship data management system, and broadcast via satellite back to Australia routinely. The observations are quality controlled at the Bureau of Meteorology and air-sea fluxes calculated using the COARE Bulk Flux algorithm.

A daily file of 1-minute averages of the observations and a daily file of 5-minute average calculated bulk fluxes are generated shortly after 0000UTC and provided to eMII.