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Fluorimeters Hydrocarbon Detection Sensors Acoustic Sonar Test Projectors Hydrophones Towed Vehicles FerryBox Calibration Renta l |
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Download
talks & posters Download article entitled 'FerryBoxes Begin to Make Waves' printed in Science Vol 322 (Dec 08) which outlines recent work using FerryBoxes. |
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Post
Meeting Update The subject of the conference is one of the fastest growing areas of marine science – where sophisticated equipment is fitted to cargo and passenger ships to provide continuous monitoring of the world’s oceans to improve our understanding of climate change. Shipping companies are collaborating with oceanographers to measure what is happening in our oceans, seas and lakes on a day-to-day basis. Such information is essential if we are to understand and quantify both the causes and effects of our Earth’s changing climate. Innovative sensor systems installed on the ships collect the data and a satellite communications system sends the numbers ashore for assessment. The oceanographic community is enthusiastic about expanding this interaction with the shipping industry. And the shipping community is equally keen to find ways to partner. The name ‘FerryBox’ was invented by Nick Fleming who was the first director of the EuroGOOS project, an informal association of national organisations (authorities, agencies and institutes) whose members seek to foster European cooperation on the Global Observing System. Nick realised that if a fraction of the 800 ferry ships working in Europe could have boxes of measuring devices installed, a major boost could be given to the collection of marine data in a highly cost-effective way. The value of the data would be enhanced where data from two or more ferries could be used together to provide information on the boundary conditions of numerical models boxing in an area of sea. The concept was further developed in an EU Science Framework 5 project called ‘FerryBox’. This project ran from 2002 to 2005. Work on eight so-called FerryBox lines successfully proved the practicality of the concept. Europe is still leading the way with over 30 systems installed. It started in the Baltic in the late 1990s at the Finnish Institute of Marine Research. European work is now spreading to the Mediterranean and across the Atlantic. Work in the Baltic is expanding and now links operations in Finland, Estonian, Germany, Poland and Sweden. Work at the Finnish Marine Institute is coordinated in the Algaline project, which monitors the fluctuations in the Baltic Sea ecosystem. This was driven forward by the need to determine the causes and to provide a warning system for the damaging blooms of toxic algae that occur in the Baltic. FerryBox system data is linked to other observation ranging aerial surveys and to work by Sea Scouts. The scale of FerryBox operations varies greatly in terms of the size and speed of ships used to the length of routes covered from global to less than 10 km. All are linked by the significant data that they are collecting around the globe. FerryBox 08 heard from Akira Harahishma (National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan) about studies in the Seto Inland Sea, Herman Ridderinkhof (Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research), spoke on how the shortest route to the island of Texel has changed understanding of sediment transport into the Wadden Sea. |
Ute Schuster, UEA made a presentation on the co-ordinated work in the North Atlantic, by the EU’s Science Framework 6 project CarboOcean that researches the marine carbon cycle, and the International Ocean Carbon Coordination Project. Discussion on the further development of the FerryBox concept as part of integrated observing systems was led by David Mills from CEFAS. David Mills described work starting with groups around the North Sea to develop a European Marine Ecosystem Observatory (Emeco). Emeco will support and make sustained measurements over decades at coastal and regional scales to quantify temporal variability in physical, chemical and biological properties. Recently, the Swire Group Charitable Trust generously pledged over £300,000 to the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton to support a research programme that monitors the oceans using sensors fixed to a cargo ship. The Swire Group is a multi-national corporation with business interests in eight core industry sectors: property, aviation, beverages, marine services, cold storage, trading and industrial, agriculture and road transport. It has long taken a proactive stance on climate change issues, both in terms of measuring and attempting to mitigate the group’s own carbon footprint, as well as its international efforts to support initiatives that aim to understand and address global climate change. The joint project, known as SNOMS (Swire NOCS Ocean Monitoring System), is an innovative programme that is yielding important information about our oceans and global climate change. By using ocean-monitoring equipment installed on Swire’s cargo ship the MV Pacific Celebes, scientists from the centre have been able to capture data about remote areas of the globe where the oceans’ interaction with the atmosphere is largely unknown. International collaboration (in the UK, Canada, France, Iceland, Norway, Spain and the USA) across the North Atlantic has produced a landmark success. The North Atlantic plays a major role in controlling the amount of carbon dioxide taken up by the oceans each year. Without this uptake the atmospheric concentration would rise more rapidly forcing up the rate of global warming and climate change. Integration of the data from the Atlantic system means that we now have the ability to monitor how the uptake of carbon dioxide changes from year to year, with a precision that can be used to quantify the results of reduced emissions of carbon dioxide when these are achieved. Dr David Hydes, who is responsible for the National Oceanography Centre’s FerryBox initiative, said: “In order to detect environmental change and to identify its causes we require data spanning an extraordinary range of spatial and temporal scales that cannot be obtained without a long-term in-situ presence in our seas and oceans. To achieve the infrastructure needed for sustained measurements over decades requires novel approaches both at a political and scientific level. The partnerships that are developing between the shipping industry and the research community are an example of how creative thinking like the FerryBox concept can make sustainable long term observations more possible by finding cost effective approaches.” David was pleased to report that the EuroGOOS Office in cooperation with SMHI, Sweden will be hosting next FerryBox Meeting in March 2010. |
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