Caro-COOPS Newsletter

Caro-COOPS continues to provide data and information products to a variety of user groups, including emergency managers, environmental managers, marine scientists, the NOAA National Weather Service, and mariners in the coastal Carolinas. We hope you'll find the newsletter of interest and welcome your thoughts and suggestions; email us at info@caro-coops.org

Storm Surge Mapping

The ability to predict and describe flooding of the Carolinas' coastal region during hurricanes, nor'easters, and extra-tropical cyclones is a primary focus of Caro-COOPS. The Caro-COOPS modeling team transforms the raw data gathered via remote sensing into useful projections, including GIS-based visualizations and maps. The backbone for the model is CEMEPS (Coastal and Estuarine Modeling and Environmental Prediction System), which was developed by the Coastal Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at North Carolina State University (NCSU).

The Caro-COOPS storm surge modeling team has run a total of 576 different storm surge scenarios for each of the following coastal areas: Beaufort, Charleston and Myrtle Beach. Atmospheric, oceanic, estuary, and river components are interactively linked, and each scenario is a variation of storm factors such as location of landfall, angle of approach, speed and storm category simulated over a 21-hour interval at mean sea level (tides would be added or subtracted from these results). These model scenario results are in the process of being converted to other products such as viewable and downloadable images, pdf's, and shape files and will be available from http://carocoops.org/hurricane/latest. This portfolio of scenarios is available to assist emergency agencies plan for flooding events and protect people and property. However, anyone accessing the information needs to remember that the predictions should be considered experimental at this point and must not be substituted for official forecasts and agency orders! The modeling team's ultimate goal is to optimize a real-time computer-driven analysis of storm surge and flooding before, during, and after storm landfall.

Buoy Array System Updates

Beginning in May 2006, the mechanical wind vane sensors on all of the Caro-COOPS and CORMP buoy systems have been replaced with ultrasonic wind sensors. These units have no moving parts and utilize an acoustic time-of-travel principle to determine wind speed and gusts. Integrated with very precise, flux-gate compasses to determine wind direction on a moving platform, it is expected that these modules will perform more accurately and be considerably more robust physically than their predecessors.

Additionally, Teledyne-RDI's NEMO Waves Processing Module has been installed on the Caro-COOPS CAP2 and CAP3 sites. (See First Quarter 2006 Newsletter, Vol 2 (1) for some test results.). These units pre-process the raw waves burst and current ensemble data to create a compact data packet suitable for transmission over the buoy's limited bandwidth subsurface inductive telemetry link as well as the system's Iridium satellite channel. Waves data are directly reported as wave height in meters, significant wave period in seconds, direction from which the waves are propagating in degrees and sea level. Current profile data are reported as easterly and northerly magnitudes at selected depths throughout the water column.

The next scheduled maintenance will be in November 2006, when several technical problems will be addressed when the systems are switched out as part of our standard maintenance.

MARMAP: Caro-COOPS & MRRI cooperative effort

From the early 1970s through today, the SC Department of Natural Resources' Marine Resources Research Institute (MRRI) has collected data in the South Atlantic Bight as part of the Marine Resources Monitoring, Assessment, and Prediction program (MARMAP). This fishery-independent assessment of reef fish abundance and life history includes data on water characteristics that have not been in a format accessible and available to the public until now. Caro-COOPS partnered with MRRI to convert their physical and chemical data to a more accessible form. The data are now readily available through a dedicated web-based search page accessed on the Caro-COOPS Data and Metadata page via a link under Other Regional Data. Using Ocean Data View (ODV) software, data can be interactively explored, analyzed, and visualized. The use and application of ODV to the MARMAP data, including preliminary graphs and results, are available on the Caro-COOPS site.

Caro-COOPS has also produced GIS shape files of maps showing the location of each CTD cast made throughout MARMAP's history. Embedded in the shape files are hotlinks to each cast site's data, all housed on the Caro-COOPS server. The shape files will be incorporated into MRRI's Interactive Offshore Fish Mapping Program, SouthEAst Geographic Fishery-Independent Survey and Historical Database (SEA-GEOFISH), providing the first hydrologic data available on that site. SEA-GEOFISH will include a direct link to the Caro-COOPS' MARMAP data search page. These shape files have also been provided to the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council to be used on their interactive GIS mapping tool: South Atlantic Habitat and Ecosystem Internet Map Server.

Operation & Maintenance (O & M)

The Caro-COOPS water levels stations stream data to the NOAA Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services (CO-OPS) National Water Level Observation Network (NWLON), and maintains the stations to ensure that they meet defined standards. O & M for the WLS/MET stations (water level/meteorological stations; Sunset Pier, Capers Island, and Fripps Inlet) was performed in May. This O & M checks the calibration of the instrumentation, upgrades software, and insures that accurate water levels are reported. This effort, which takes two days per station, is performed by an outside contractor, Martek Scientific. The vertical levels must meet a strict requirement, and a station cannot be out of specification by more than 6mm within a year. The results of this yearly O & M verify the previous year's data.

Additonal O & M is performed by a dive service to clean and inspect the water level primary well to remove any marine growth and to verify that no damage has occurred to the parallel plates.

During the maintenance, the water level sensor is removed and replaced with a recalibrated unit. The tubing for the acoustic sensor is cleaned, the calibration of the barometric sensor is checked, new bearings are installed in the wind sensors, and a calibrated air temperature/relative humidity sensor is installed. Any software updates to the data logger and satellite transmitter are downloaded. Communication between the transmitters and the NOAA GOES satellite is checked and the antennae adjusted as needed due to satellite drift. If the signal power to the satellite is insufficient, data cannot be transmitted to NOAA. If the power level is too great, it damage to the front end (receiver) of the GOES satellite is possible, and NOAA will disable the station. Data are also sent to USC via a wireless PCS system, and these CDMA radio transmissions are checked. This includes a visual inspection of the solar panels and testing of the batteries and the solar panel outputs to insure that we have sufficient abilities to maintain charge and operate the stations.

The Caro-COOPS Technical Specialists, Don Stanfield and Charles Gabriel, visited each station during the week of July 17th to make minor repairs and ensure that the stations were operating at 100% efficiency for the upcoming hurricane season. We are grateful to ECO Tours at Isle of Palms for their assistance during this time. They make numerous educational trips to Capers Island and are able to help inform a variety of visitors and students about the coastal stations and why they are valuable to the public.

Quarterly Trends

The examples below illustrate quarterly trends in air temperature, water temperature, bottom currents, and surface currents at our CAP2 station, approximately 5 miles offshore of Capers Island, SC. Visit the Caro-COOPS website for additional information and data illustrating changes in coastal conditions over the past months.

Approximate averages for the quarter March 15 to June 15, 2006.