Water Velocity Profiles Collected on All NOAA Fleet Vessels

The NOAA research vessel fleet employs acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs) that aid a variety of NOAA programs and contribute to the global climatology of ocean current observations. CIMAR scientists at UH now maintain and upgrade the ADCP data acquisition and processing software, called the University of Hawai‘i Data Acquisition System (UHDAS), on all 11 NOAA vessels. CIMAR provides on-site upgrades and training, when possible, and remote consulting on UHDAS use and interpretation of acquired data, including immediate response to queries from at-sea ships. During the height of the pandemic, upgrades were performed remotely for installations and training sessions (“UHDAS for operations”) for NOAA officers were conducted via videoconference. CIMAR staff is working with NOAA to establish the NOAA-to-NOAA real-time data pipeline from the ships to the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) so observations will be available for researchers quickly and accurately.