A Look inside the National Oceanography Center
Southampton
By Rory Howlett
The National Oceanography Center, Southampton (NOCS) is an internationally renowned center for research, teaching and technology in oceanography and Earth science. As the focus for the UK, it is very supportive of the wider academic community, and hosts international conferences and events such as the Unmanned Underwater Vehicle Showcase and Ocean Business. NOCS (www.noc.soton.ac.uk) is jointly owned by the UK's Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the University of Southampton. Based at a purposebuilt waterside campus, it is home to some 520 research scientists and support staff, as well as over 750 students. Its mission includes the management the national research vessel fleet and other major facilities, strategic (issuebased), blue skies and academic (curiosity driven) research, the teaching of ocean and Earth science, and engagement between science and society. With wide capability across the ocean and Earth sciences, its focus is large-scale, deep ocean and seafloor processes, development of major marine technology capability for ocean research, and long-term studies of the oceans and climate. NOCS provides impartial, world-class services and facilities underpinning a global oceanographic research capability for the UK, safeguarding the nation's position in the international 'premier league' of oceanography. It is a major contributor to Oceans 2025 (www.oceans2025.org), a $180 million NERC research program that aims to address the challenges of a changing marine environment. By 2025, the collective activities of humankind are expected to have a major impact on our oceans, potentially affecting millions of people across the world. Demand for natural resources is expected to increase by at least a third and sea levels to rise significantly. A forecast 30 percent decrease in Arctic sea-ice extent could radically change ecosystems and accelerate high-latitude climate change. Oceans 2025 will increase
40 MTR
our understanding of the size, nature and impacts of these changes and address some of the most fundamental issues in marine science. As such, it will be critical to developing sustainable solutions for the management of marine resources for future generations. As being the UK's focus, the center is a major contributor to international projects such as CLIVAR - a global study of natural climate variability and human induced climate change (see www.clivar.org). NOCS also plays an active role in the Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO; www.ocean-partners.org), a forum created by leaders of major oceanographic institutions around the world to promote global oceanography, particularly the implementation of an international and integrated global ocean observing system. Argo (www.bodc.ac.uk/projects/international/argo), a network of 3,000 ocean profiling floats, is dedicated to recording the state of the worldıs oceans and has entered a vital sustained maintenance phase. The floats make measurements of the ocean's 'vital signs' -- temperature, salinity and velocity -- with a level of detail never before achieved. The operational floats in the Argo array provide coverage of the oceans at approximately every 3 degrees latitude and longitude around the globe. From the conception of the Argo project, POGO advocated for complete coverage of the world's oceans, especially in the historically undersampled Southern Hemisphere. Today, data from the Argo program, especially on trends in ocean temperature and salinity, are profoundly advancing the way scientists understand the oceans and their effects on global climate. The center's computer modeling facilities provide a major resource for scientists. The center was the European coordinator for the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) -- a world-wide collaboration -- and has produced a series of global ocean-climate models since (see
March 2009
You don't have Macromedia Flash Player installed.
This content requires the Macromedia Flash Player.
Get Flash
www.marinelink.com