IN SITU OBSERVATIONS: SYSTEMS AND MANAGEMENT
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Figure 1. Platforms to use according to phenomena to sample and the kind of network to be
set up (Global, Regional, Coastal).
¾ Regional: System designed to provide data in a specific area to
monitor specific phenomena (e.g., TAO/TRITON/PIRATA Array
for El Nino detection, Artic buoy network for Ice monitoring, etc).
Generally it is set up in collaboration with few countries (less than
10) and the number of parameters is more important (between 10
and 20), including ocean (both physical and bio-chemical) and
meteorological measurements. The time sampling is often higher
rate: from hours to days.
¾ Coastal: These observing systems are usually set up at the national
level to answer very specific questions such as coastal monitoring of
the water quality or wind/wave/tide monitoring in harbour areas, etc.
There is very poor collaboration among countries and these data are
often used exclusively by the coastal models that have led to setting
up the system. The technical issues to be solved are much more
complicated such as bio-fouling (micro-organisms growing on the
sensors and perturbating the measurements), interference by
fishermen or other ships in area. A lot of technological work is
under development in this field especially to set up cabled systems
linked to shore with very high-speed networks.