[Coral-List] Discovery Bay, Jamaica ICON/CREWS Station Installed

[Jim Hendee]

Greetings!

    We are very pleased to announce that as of 10:00am local time, June 
7, 2007, a new NOAA/AOML CREWS (Coral Reef Early Warning System) station 
at West Fore Reef,  Discovery Bay, Jamaica (latitude 18.4727, longitude 
-77.4158), began transmitting data.  CREWS stations are part of the 
Integrated Coral Observing Network (ICON) of in situ and virtual 
environmental monitoring stations/sites (currently over 120).  The 
Discovery Bay data are available here,

    http://www.coral.noaa.gov/crw/crw_data_dbjm1_Web_12.html

and, with more information, here,

    http://ecoforecast.coral.noaa.gov/index/0/DBJM1/station-home
 
The latter site includes data from the station, as well as data 
integrated from satellite sources and the HYCOM model.  The site also 
includes beginning constructs for coral bleaching at this site, but will 
undergo further refinement in cooperation with personnel from University 
of the West Indies, Centre for Marine Sciences, Discovery Bay Marine 
Laboratory (DBML), who have bleaching data from shallow to 120' for many 
years.  Other ecoforecasts will undergo refinement later this summer.

    Instruments at this site include those for measuring air 
temperature, winds (speed, gusts, direction), barometric pressure, 
precipitation (intensity, amount, duration), light (PAR, 305, 330, 380 
nm) above and below the water (two depths), sea temperature, salinity, 
and pCO2.  Satellite data acquired for this site include measurements 
for sea temperature (two sources) and wind speed.  Model data from HYCOM 
include sea temperature, salinity and winds.

    For those who are interested in the logistics of this undertaking, a 
blog detailing installation of the station at the site can be seen here,

    http://dbjm1-log.blogspot.com/

    This project has been supported through the MACC project,

    
http://www.caricom.org/jsp/projects/macc%20project/macc.jsp?menu=projects

the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre,

    http://www.caribbeanclimate.bz/news.php

World Bank/GEF, CARICOM, the University of the West Indies, and NOAA.  
Many other partners have also been extremely helpful in this project, 
including especially personnel from the University of Miami/Rosenstiel 
School for Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.

    Cheers,
    The ICON/CREWS Team