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MMS to map ocean currents in Beaufort Sea, Cook Inlet Agency says study will provide oceanographic information for shipping, fishing and offshore oil and gas industries Petroleum News
The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service said Nov. 24 that in conjunction with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration it has launched a four-year study of daily and seasonal current changes in Alaska waters using high-frequency Doppler radar.
The study is expected to provide better oceanographic information for shipping, fishing and offshore oil and gas industries.
The high-frequency Doppler radar will be used to map “daily and seasonal current changes” in Alaska waters, first in the Beaufort Sea and then in Cook Inlet.
MMS and NOAA are partnered under the umbrella of the National Ocean Partnership Program.
The study involves a team of scientists from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Codar Ocean Sensors. They will set up radar stations along the Beaufort Sea’s central coast to measure currents, “much like National Weather Service radar tracks thunderstorms,” MMS said. Surface currents will be measured during open water and mixed ice periods from June through October 2005 and 2006.
The radar units will then be moved to Cook Inlet and will be used to measure surface currents there for a full year beginning in October 2006 and ending in November 2007.
MMS studies chief James Kendall said MMS expects “data and experience from this study will enhance the safety of offshore workers and the marine environment.” Radar tested in October Principal investigator Dave Musgrave, associate professor for marine science at UAF’s School of Fisheries and Ocean Services, said the agency took advantage of open water conditions in the Beaufort Sea this October “to test the Doppler radar units for the distance from shore that we will be able to map surface currents, which is typically 50 miles.” He said that initial results collected the week of Oct. 4 “indicate that we can ‘see’ over the barrier islands into the open Beaufort Sea.”
Musgrave said the radar “units have the capability to map the surface currents every hour on a two-dimensional grid of points separated by one mile in each direction.” When the units are deployed next year, he said, it “will give us the first quantitative look at the spatial patterns of surface currents in the Beaufort Sea and how they vary with time.”
In addition to contributing to baseline oceanography, MMS said it will also use the data “for comparing hydrodynamic and circulation models used to develop oil spill risk analyses for offshore oil and gas operations.”
“This study will give us the first look at the spatial patterns of surface currents in the Beaufort Sea and how they vary with time,” Musgrave said.
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