ASA 127th Meeting M.I.T. 1994 June 6-10

2aUW6. Global acoustic mapping of ocean temperatures (GAMOT).

John L. Spiesberger

Dept. of Meteorol. and the Appl. Res. Lab., 512 Walker Bldg., Penn State Univ., University Park, PA 16802

Dan Frye

Woods Hole Oceanogr. Inst.

Harley Hurlburt

Joe McCaffrey

Naval Res. Lab., Stennis Space Center, MS

Mark Johnson

Univ. of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK

James O'Brien

Florida State Univ., Tallahassee, FL

The GAMOT group is developing two instruments that will economically map temperatures in the global oceans at a resolution suitable for understanding natural variability in climate and separating that from a global warming trend. The status of these instruments, a surface suspended acoustic receiver and an autonomous source mooring, will be presented. According to state-of-the-art models of the ocean. changes in climate can be easily detected with acoustic thermometers. These types of models represent climatic variability quite well since they replicate variations in climate measured from satellite altimeters and infrared sensors. The fastest way to detect global warming is to subtract off natural variability and examine the residual for trends. [Work supported by the Advanced Research Projects Agency.]