Tsunami Warning Buoy Deployed off Chile

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January 1, 2005

Scientists from the Chilean Navy Hydrographic and Oceanographic Office (SHOA), in cooperation with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), deployed a SHOA tsunami warning buoy off Northern Chile in the Pacific in December 2004 just prior to the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami. The mooring is part of a Chilean national plan for a comprehensive ocean array west of Chile. The tsunami deployment buoy was one of many NOAA-funded activities undertaken under the direction of a WHOI Chief Scientist from the vessel Ronald H. Brown, which sailed from Arica, Chile, December 5 with the primary mission of recovering and redeploying the NOAA Climate Observation program.s Ocean Reference Station (ORS) at 85°W, 20°S under persistent stratus clouds found off northern Chile and Peru. The WHOI Upper Ocean Processes Group maintains this station as well as one north of Hawaii and another near Barbados in the North Atlantic. The high quality data collected at the ORS are used to produce accurate estimates of the air-sea exchanges of heat, freshwater, and momentum and to validate and motivate improvement in numerical atmosphere, ocean, and coupled models. As in earlier cruises to the stratus region, scientists from NOAA.s Environmental Technology Laboratory in Boulder, CO and Chilean university investigators and graduate students participated in research activities, as did a middle school teacher from Arkansas chosen as the NOAA teacher at sea for this cruise.