May 5, 2003
Contact: Robert Lowery (509-963-1487/fax 509-963-2301/e-mail: loweryr@cwu.edu)
ELLENSBURG, Wash. - The Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO)
Project will be one of the points of discussion during the next Central
Washington University geological science seminar, Friday, May 9, at
noon in Lind 215.
Dr. Eddie Bernard, director of the Pacific Marine
Environmental Laboratory, one of the National Oceanic Atmospheric
Administration's (NOAA) Oceanographic Research Laboratories, will lead
the seminar.
Bernard, who has held the position since 1983, directs a
broad range of oceanographic research programs, including ocean climate
dynamics, fisheries oceanography, El Niño forecasts, tsunamis and
seafloor spreading.
His work has included assisting with the completion of the
TAO array, the world’s largest ocean observing system. Since 1994, the
array, consisting of 70 moored buoys along the equator, has measured
and relayed via satellite real-time surface wind, sea surface
temperature, upper ocean temperatures and currents, air temperature and
relative humidity.
It has provided a major source of information about
variability in the Tropical Pacific, operational weather forecasting
and El Niño prediction.
Bernard, who has served as director of the National Tsunami
Warning Center in Honolulu, will also discuss Tsunami activities and
the oceanic impacts and consequences of underwater volcanoes and
hydrothermal venting during his free, public CWU presentation.
For more information, or for persons of disability to arrange
for reasonable accommodation, call (509) 963-2702, or (for the hearing
impaired) TDD (509) 963-2143.
