Progress in multidisciplinary sensing of the 4-dimensional ocean

Many luminaries of oceanography have articulated the problem of adequately sampling a multiplicity of interdisciplinary ocean processes. Progress has accelerated within the past two decades as societal and naval interests in monitoring and predicting the state of the ocean environment has heightened. Oceanographers are capitalizing on a host of new platform and sensing technologies. Some recent programs contributing to improved 4-dimensional open and coastal ocean multi-disciplinary observations are used to highlight the development of new integrated optical, chemical, and physical measurement systems that can be deployed from stationary and mobile platforms to telemeter data in near real-time or real-time. For example, the NOPP O-SCOPE and MOSEAN projects have developed and tested several optical and chemical sensors in deep waters off Bermuda and Hawaii, at OWS 'P' in the North Pacific Ocean, and in coastal waters off Santa Barbara and Monterey, California. Most of the testing for these projects has been conducted using moorings; however, NOPP instrumentation is also being used on mobile platforms including AUVs, profiling floats, and gliders. Progress in adequately sampling the temporal and spatial variability of selected ocean 'sampling volumes' using multi-platform, multi-disciplinary sampling is described using examples from selected recent programs.