Smith, S. R. (2006). Collaboration between Shipboard Oceanic and Atmospheric Data Programs. EOS , 87 , 463,466.
Smith, S. R. (2006). Progress of the Shipboard Automated Meteorological and Oceanographic System (SAMOS) initiative . Climate Observation Program 4th Annual System Review, NOAA, Silver Spring, MD, USA.
Smith, S. R., Bentamy, A., & Clayson, C. A. (2006). SEAFLUX 3rd Workshop. Flux News , (2).
Smith, S. R., Bourassa, M. A., Rolph, J., & Hughes, P. (2006). The FSU fluxes for the Atlantic and Indian Oceans . Climate Observation Program 4th Annual System Review, NOAA, Silver Spring, MD, USA.
Smith, S. R., Keeley, R., & Delcroix, T. (2006). Report of the 1st Joint GOSUD/SAMOS Workshop . Boulder, CO, USA: UCAR Joint Office for Science Support.
Smith, S. R., Kent, E. C., & Cook, S. K. (2005). Shipboard Automated Meteorological and Oceanographic System (SAMOS) Initiative . 3rd Session of the JCOMM Ship Observation Team. Brest, France: World Meteorological Organization.
Smith, S. R., Alory, G., Andersson, A., Asher, W., Baker, A., Berry, D. I., et al. (2019). Ship-Based Contributions to Global Ocean, Weather, and Climate Observing Systems. Front. Mar. Sci. , 6 , 434.
Abstract: The role ships play in atmospheric, oceanic, and biogeochemical observations is described with a focus on measurements made near the ocean surface. Ships include merchant and research vessels; cruise liners and ferries; fishing vessels; coast guard, military, and other government-operated ships; yachts; and a growing fleet of automated surface vessels. The present capabilities of ships to measure essential climate/ocean variables and the requirements from a broad community to address operational, commercial, and scientific needs are described. The authors provide a vision to expand observations needed from ships to understand and forecast the exchanges across the ocean–atmosphere interface. The vision addresses (1) recruiting vessels to improve both spatial and temporal sampling, (2) conducting multivariate sampling on ships, (3) raising technology readiness levels of automated shipboard sensors and ship-to-shore data communications, (4) advancing quality evaluation of observations, and (5) developing a unified data management approach for observations and metadata that meet the needs of a diverse user community. Recommendations are made focusing on integrating private and autonomous vessels into the observing system, investing in sensor and communications technology development, developing an integrated data management structure that includes all types of ships, and moving toward a quality evaluation process that will result in a subset of ships being defined as mobile reference ships that will support climate studies. We envision a future where commercial, research, and privately owned vessels are making multivariate observations using a combination of automated and human-observed measurements. All data and metadata will be documented, tracked, evaluated, distributed, and archived to benefit users of marine data. This vision looks at ships as a holistic network, not a set of disparate commercial, research, and/or third-party activities working in isolation, to bring these communities together for the mutual benefit of all.
Smith, S. R., Briggs, K., Bourassa, M. A., Elya, J., & Paver, C. R. (2018). Shipboard automated meteorological and oceanographic system data archive: 2005-2017. Geosci Data J , 5 (2), 73–86.
Abstract: Since 2005, the Shipboard Automated Meteorological and Oceanographic System (SAMOS) initiative has been collecting, quality-evaluating, distributing, and archiving underway navigational, meteorological, and oceanographic observations from research vessels. Herein we describe the procedures for acquiring ship and instrumental metadata and the one-minute interval observations from 44 research vessels that have contributed to the SAMOS initiative from 2005 to 2017. The overall data processing workflow and quality control procedures are documented along with data file formats and version control procedures. The SAMOS data are disseminated to the user community via web, FTP, and Thematic Real-time Environmental Distributed Data Services from both the Marine Data Center at the Florida State University and the National Centers for Environmental Information, which serves as the long-term archive for the SAMOS initiative. They have been used to address topics ranging from air-sea interaction studies, the calibration, evaluation, and development of satellite observational products, the evaluation of numerical atmospheric and ocean models, and the development of new tools and techniques for geospatial data analysis in the informatics community. Maps provide users the geospatial coverage within the SAMOS dataset, with a focus on the Essential Climate/Ocean Variables, and recommendations are made regarding which versions of the dataset should be accessed by different user communities.
Stauffer, C. L. (2018). Air-sea coupling dependency on sea surface temperature fronts as observed by research vessel data . Bachelor's thesis, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL.
Steffen, J., & Bourassa, M. (2018). Barrier Layer Development Local to Tropical Cyclones based on Argo Float Observations. J. Phys. Oceanogr. , 48 (9), 1951–1968.
Abstract: The objective of this study is to quantify barrier layer development due to tropical cyclone (TC) passage using Argo float observations of temperature and salinity. To accomplish this objective, a climatology of Argo float measurements is developed from 2001 to 2014 for the Atlantic, eastern Pacific, and central Pacific basins. Each Argo float sample consists of a prestorm and poststorm temperature and salinity profile pair. In addition, a no-TC Argo pair dataset is derived for comparison to account for natural ocean state variability and instrument sensitivity. The Atlantic basin shows a statistically significant increase in barrier layer thickness (BLT) and barrier layer potential energy (BLPE) that is largely attributable to an increase of 2.6 m in the post-TC isothermal layer depth (ITLD). The eastern Pacific basin shows no significant changes to any barrier layer characteristic, likely due to a shallow and highly stratified pycnocline. However, the near-surface layer freshens in the upper 30 m after TC passage, which increases static stability. Finally, the central Pacific has a statistically significant freshening in the upper 20-30 m that increases upper-ocean stratification by similar to 35%. The mechanisms responsible for increases in BLPE vary between the Atlantic and both Pacific basins; the Atlantic is sensitive to ITLD deepening, while the Pacific basins show near-surface freshening to be more important in barrier layer development. In addition, Argo data subsets are used to investigate the physical relationships between the barrier layer and TC intensity, TC translation speed, radial distance from TC center, and time after TC passage.
