Oceanic Projects and Programmes

ship time, this is no guarantee IGBP and big that any of its participants will be funded. This makes it difficult to observational campaigns assure that even the most critical B. Huebert observations can be made. The VOCALS programme (Ocean-Cloud-Atmosphere- Land Study, under the aegis of How successful have IGBP proj- off, leaving just (very good) the Variability of the American ects been at bringing together studies of atmospheric sulphur Monsoon Systems) is an excel- international groups to do chemistry. The cross-disciplinary lent example. This is a study observation programmes that linkages rarely appeal to disci- in the South East Pacific of no one nation could manage? pline-oriented reviewers and linkages between ocean heat International collaboration on programme managers. budgets and mixing, upwelled big programmes certainly helps Projects from both the IGBP nutrients, marine biota, aero- bring more people into the and the World Climate Research sols, clouds, and radiative enterprise and has unequivocal Programme (WCRP) make plans transfer. It could have been benefits for scientists in coun- for observations by groups from the ideal IGBP/WCRP collab- tries that lack the resources to many countries. Unfortunately, orative programme (initiated by create their own Science Plan, one can never be sure in advance CLIVAR – Climate Variability but are the overarching goals which of these groups will be and Predictability), in which all achieved? Certainly the devel- funded to participate, so imple- the related programmes (the opment of stationary facili- mentation plans can’t include WCRP working group on surface ties (Mace Head, Large-scale strategies that depend on having fluxes, and the IGBP projects: Biosphere Atmosphere Experi- any one group or platform. SOLAS studying the surface ment in Amazonia towers, Cape Any programme officer in any ocean-lower atmosphere inter- Verde – see following article by country, whether well-informed face, IGAC addressing global D. Wallace – and other research or not, can decline a grant for atmospheric chemistry, and sites) has facilitated observa- critical participating groups or IMBER that investigates marine tions by international groups. platforms. The experiment plan- and ecosys- Both the IGAC science plan ners are at the mercy of review- tems, etc.) could find issues their addressing global atmospheric ers, panelists, and programme community could address. So chemistry, and the SOLAS managers, many of whom have, that is what was written into the science plan examining the by choice, not worked in this Science Plan and Implementa- ocean surface and the lower field recently. Since many agen- tion Strategy: we will all go to atmosphere, have talked about cies conduct their assessments the South East Pacific together, testing the CLAW Hypothesis in secrecy from those planners, testing portions of the CLAW (Figure 1). This hypothesis some judgments will inevitably Hypothesis, studying the factors proposes a feedback loop that be poorly informed. that control air-sea exchange, operates between ocean ecosys- In the US, the National and connecting biogenic gas tems and the Earth’s climate, Science Foundation is most emissions to the particles on connecting marine biota to likely to support biogeochemi- which cloud droplets condense. DMS fluxes, aerosols and cloud cal research. Most programme SOLAS was actively involved properties. Yet in almost two managers take the view that in organizing VOCALS: partici- decades of experiments, we only peer-review can determine pating in planning meetings; have never managed to get funding, to the exclusion of writing plans, brochures, coordinated studies of each unified planning. Even though presentations, and platform of the critical parts funded. In an experiment goes through requests; organizing informa- IGAC programmes, the marine extensive reviews of its science tional meetings; and pitching biological work always got cut plan to be awarded aircraft or participation in VOCALS during

4 Global Change NewsLetter No. 73 April 2009 Global Change NewsLetter No. 73 April 2009 every talk possible. There was mentation strategy described profiles could not support budget real enthusiasm as planners and the role of each, but had to studies of sulphur gases and their constituencies thought be worded so that the loss of aerosols, so the SOLAS obser- of participating in a grander any one group or platform vations and the aerosol/cloud enterprise than any one could would not jeopardize funding studies evolved into coincident- do alone. Ancillary groups also for the folks who were able to but-independent experiments. took this bait, no doubt in part get resources to do their part. VOCALS Rex went into because the scientific justifica- Everything and everyone had the field in the fall of 2008 as tion had already been written. to appear expendable. planned. Some very successful Anything they do would be Happily, NOAA made the SOLAS-inspired experiments enhanced by proximity to the R/V Ronald H. Brown avail- were conducted. Many valuable larger VOCALS programme. able for VOCALS. However, insights are emerging, especially In a big programme, each a second ship could not be with regard to the relation- platform has its niche: the funded, so the Brown had ships between ocean dynamics, oceanographic questions of to split its time between the biology, and dimethyl sulphide nutrient upwelling, mixing, surveying and stationary strate- chemistry on sub-kilometer eddies, and heat transport in gies. The good news is that one scales. CLAW will have to wait VOCALS would be best studied set of biological productivity again. The IGBP-type interdisci- using a continuously-moving observations was made from the plinary objectives that got many ship, doing butterfly patterns Ronald H. Brown, alongside eddy of us excited about VOCALS and pulling a SeaSoar that could correlation DMS flux measure- could not be achieved. Again. profile throughout the mixed ments: some SOLAS-inspired This same problem plagues layer. Atmospheric measure- biology and flux measurements many IGBP programmes: ments, cloud radars, and gas survived the funding process. without some agency that is fluxes would be best measured Unfortunately, neither oxidants, willing to agree in advance to from a (nearly) stationary ship, NO, nor OH was measured, so fund a coherent set of observa- pointed into the wind so that the programme could not obser- tions and platforms, certain flow distortions are minimized. vationally be able to constrain essential measurements will Airmass mixing, in situ particles, the photochemical link between inevitably come up against an photochemical budgets, and the measured DMS fluxes and oppositional reviewer or other entrainment of free-tropospheric the growth of aerosols that obstacle, and not be funded. air would be best studied from control the clouds. Furthermore, Many valuable studies will be long-range aircraft. The imple- the cloud-oriented C-130 flight done, but the discipline-connect- ing goals that motivate these large programmes often are not. This problem may be too much for the International Group of Funding Agencies for Global Environmental Change (IGFA) to resolve. We have the scientific interest and the observational tools to test the CLAW hypothe- sis, for instance, but we still lack the institutional ones. This is a challenge IGBP must address if we are ever to test our most significant conceptual models against observations on the necessary scales. Barry Huebert Former SOLAS SSC Member Department of University of Hawaii Honolulu, HI 96822 USA A schematic diagram of the CLAW hypothesis of Robert Charlson, , [email protected] Meinrat Andreae and Stephen Warren (1986), Nature, 32:655-66 (Reproduced with permission)

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