Project WHOTS - WHOI Hawaii Ocean Time-series Station

Location Map

WHOTS is at about 22° 45´ North, 158° West.

WHOTS Buoy

The WHOTS surface mooring.

Overview

In cooperation with the Hawaii Ocean Timeseries (HOT) project, the UOP Group has undertaken moored observations of surface forcing in the central Pacific. The primary intent of the WHOI HOT Station (WHOTS) is to provide long-term, high-quality air-sea fluxes as a coordinated part of the HOT program, and contribute to the HOT goals of observing heat, momentum, fresh water and chemical fluxes at a site representative of the oligotrophic North Pacific Ocean.

A moored surface buoy instrumented with a full complement of meteorological sensors was deployed in August, 2004 at about 22° 45´ North, 158° West. Subsurface instrumentation on the mooring is provided by the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), University of Hawaii under a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Sponsors

The WHOTS experiment is supported through the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Ocean Research ( CICOR), a partnership between the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Principal funding is provided by the NOAA Office of Climate Observations (OCO). Additional support is provided by the National Science Foundation ( NSF) Division of Ocean Sciences (OCE).