Observatory science is VERY USEFUL in accomplishing the following:

• Test and improve ocean circulation models;

• Observe and understand extratropical coupling of ocean and atmosphere on seasonal to interdecadal timescales;

• Understand the physics of the exchange processes between the ocean and atmosphere;

• Observe the generation, maintenance, and destruction of ocean climate anomalies;

• Predict climate variability and change;

• Monitor, understand, and predict

  • the sequestration of carbon dioxide in the ocean;

  • productivity and biomass variability, including identification of the factors that control them;

  • the full temporal and vertical evolution of thermohaline structure;

  • rapid episodic changes of the ocean (e.g., mixed-layer response to hurricanes, deep convection, meridional overturning circulation);

  • changes in water mass transformation processes;

  • air-sea exchanges of heat, moisture, momentum, and gases;

  • thermohaline variability in the Arctic and Antarctic;

  • vertical exchanges of heat, salt, nutrients, and carbon;

  • the pathways of ocean transports, such as deep western boundary currents; and

  • the role of eddies in transport and mixing.

• Provide reference sites for calibration or verification of

  • air-sea fluxes from numerical weather prediction models, satellites, and other methods;

  • absolute interior and Ekman layer velocities;

  • remotely sensed variables (sea surface temperature, sea level, wind, color); and

  • model statistics, physics, and parameterizations and how they change in evolving climate systems.

Observatory science is USEFUL in investigating the following:

• Water mass formation and destruction; and

• The relationship of heat and freshwater fluxes to wind and buoyancy forcing.