The Australian Integrated Marine Observing System Southern Ocean Time Series facility

The CSIRO, Bureau of Meteorology, University of Tasmania, and Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC operate the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) Southern Ocean Time Series (SOTS) facility with funding from the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS)- a set of moorings designed to quantify physical, chemical, and biological processes important to the transfer of heat, moisture, momentum, oxygen and carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and ocean. There are 3 mooring platforms at the SOTS site near 140°E, 47°S in ~4500 m water depth, in the Subantarctic Zone (SAZ) ~36 hours by ship southwest of Tasmania: i) the Southern Ocean Flux Station (SOFS) - a large surface tower buoy that focuses on meteorological measurements, ii) the Pulse surface mixed layer mooring focusing on biological nutrient and carbon transformations using sensors and an automated water sampler, and iii) the deep SAZ sediment trap mooring (below 1000 m depth) that quantifies sinking carbon fluxes to the ocean interior and returns particle samples for a broad range of biogeochemical studies. Additional applications include evaluation of wave models, calibration of isotopic proxies for past ocean conditions, and quantification of impacts of ocean acidification on foraminiferal zooplankton.