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Abstract
In July 2007, a new Light Detection And Ranging (LIDAR)-based water-level measurement system was installed at the Harvest platform with the goals of assessing potential drifts in the primary National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) water level (bubbler) system and of providing insight on other environmental conditions which may affect the bubbler accuracy. In addition, the LIDAR provides an independent measure of significant wave height (SWH), which has traditionally been derived from nearby buoys (operated by Scripps and NOAA). The open ocean environment of the Harvest Platform has presented significant challenges. Despite these difficult operating conditions, the LIDAR system has shown promise in being able to assess drift in the bubbler as well as the dependencies on SWH and wind speed. However, a longer time series of data and better environmental condition measurements are needed in order to make an assessment of these parameters with the desired accuracy (e.g., drift to better than 1 mm/yr).
Acknowledgements
We are thankfully for the help of Mark Bailey, Steve Gill, Caleb Gostnell, Steve Hudziak, and Bob Heitsenrether at NOAA. The Harvest research activities are funded by the NASA Physical Oceanography Program. A portion of the work described in this paper was performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.