Southern Ocean Surface Mooring

"The Southern Ocean Surface Mooring is co-located with Southern Ocean Profiler Mooring at the Apex site. Two identical Flanking Moorings make up the equidistant sides of a triangle of Moorings (50 km) from the Apex site. The Surface Mooring is located in 4,800 meters of water in the Southern Ocean, SW of Chile. The triangular configuration moorings provide unique spatial array through which instruments fixed to moorings continuously collect data through time and gliders sample the area between the moorings. The Southern Ocean site is one of four high latitude open ocean locations in the OOI that provide observations to gain better insight into global ocean circulation and climate. In particular instruments on the Surface Buoy will provide key insights into climate dynamics associated with air-sea fluxes.
The Southern Ocean Surface Mooring is specifically designed to examine global phenomena as well as withstand rough sea conditions associated with high latitude, deep, open ocean sites. The Surface Mooring contains instruments attached to a Surface Buoy floating on the sea surface, Near Surface Instrument Frame 12 meters below the surface, and instruments attached to the Mooring Riser at fixed depths through the water column. The Surface Buoy provides a platform on which to secure surface instruments above the sea surface, below the sea surface, and across the interface between. Additionally the Surface Buoy contains antennas to transmit data to shore via satellite."