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Buoys, stations provide clear weather picture
By Rachel Pleasant
Staff Writer
With seven named storms by the end of July, it is clear this hurricane season will be what forecasters predicted: busy.
While South Carolina, and particularly the Charleston area, has yet to see any tropical action in 2005, a system of instruments and buoys is in place off the coast to provide potentially life-saving information should a storm come this way.
The Carolina Coastal Ocean Observing and Prediction System, administered by the University of South Carolina with input from research partners at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, is now in its second year of operation.
Funded by a $2.5 million National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grant, the system consists of three coastal observing stations located in Hilton Head, Charleston and Myrtle Beach and five buoys situated about 50 miles offshore from those stations.
The stations and buoys measure sea conditions, including salinity, chlorophyll level, currents’ speed and direction, temperature, air pressure and wind speed and direction.
Data collected by those buoys and instruments is compiled, transmitted by satellite every two hours and posted on the system’s Web site (www.caro
coops.org).
The information is available to anyone with Internet access and may be helpful in making all kinds of decisions, such as whether to take the sailboat out today or whether to evacuate in advance of an approaching storm.
Though there are similar systems in place in other areas, Caro-Coops has the most equipment in this specific area, providing a more complete picture of conditions, says Madilyn Fletcher, director of the Baruch Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences at the University of South Carolina and the principal investigator on the Caro-Coops project.
Setting a goal
The density of the Caro-Coops equipment makes it perfect for achieving one main goal: a better method of predicting storm surge.
The current storm surge prediction model used by NOAA could be greatly improved, Fletcher says.
“There are many different factors that determine flooding. It’s not just the wind and direction of a hurricane or the characteristics of the seabed. What’s also really important is the amount of rain over the previous few days and whether the land has buildings on it or is farmland. Storm surge prediction is complex. Part of our team has developed a model that incorporates more of the variations,” Fletcher says.
With a model developed, Fletcher says all her fellow scientists can do is wait for it to be tested.
“We won’t know how well it’s going to work until it’s tested,” she says.
When the storm comes, the Caro-Coops instruments and buoys will “tell us how good our prediction is and what’s actually happening at the time,” Fletcher says, which will allow the storm-surge model to be tweaked and strengthened.
Fletcher envisions local governments using Caro-Coops data to determine the safest shelter locations and best storage locations for emergency equipment. The improved storm surge prediction system may also be able to provide accurate estimates for how long it will take floodwaters to recede and, therefore, how long evacuees will be out of their homes.
Daily use
For all its storm-related potential, Fletcher says Caro-Coops is a handy tool even in non-catastrophic scenarios, and the benefits for business owners are limitless.
“Let’s say you’re a charter boat captain, you can use the information to know if people will get sea sick or if it’s even safe to go out,” she says. “It’s useful to anybody in the water. They have a fix on what’s actually happening out there.”
The Caro-Coops Web site receives between 7,000 and 8,000 hits per month, though it is impossible to know how many of those hits come from recreational users versus commercial users, Fletcher says.
Fletcher is working to educate the public about the program, in hopes of increasing the number of Web site visits.
At Charleston’s Barton and Burwell Fishing & Hunting, manager Patrick Frizelle says he currently relies on a service that faxes him aerial photographs of fishing waters.
Trouble is he receives those images sometimes hours ahead of a scheduled charter tour.
“With the pictures, they have a weather window. Let’s say I call and tell them I need a picture for tomorrow morning. They might be able to go out between 12 and 1 in the afternoon today. It’s not up-to-the minute,” Frizelle says.
A system that provides regularly updated information and can be accessed with a few mouse clicks is exciting news, he says.
Problems on the horizon
The Caro-Coops project has not been without its glitches. For one, Fletcher says, the Caro-Coops team has had a problem with ships hitting the buoys.
“It’s expensive to put them out there,” she says. “These things get damaged. We’ve had some really bad luck. You lose communication. We’ve had bad luck with them getting hit by ships, and then you have to get out there and replace them.”
In addition to hardware troubles, Caro-Coops also has big worries when it comes to the books.
Funding for the project is not budgeted for fiscal year 2006. Fletcher says she and her colleagues are working diligently to restore the money.
“But we are not calling it quits,” Fletcher says. “The plan is this will be a national system that will serve people on the water and in our coastal region.”
Caro-Coops is still in its beginnings of development, and there are numerous ways it could be expanded, Fletcher says.
“There are so many problems related to biological systems. For instance, fisheries; we hear about fisheries being depleted, but we don’t understand what’s happening out at the oceans in real time,” she says. “There are a number of instruments being developed to measure things such as nutrients, contaminants, toxic substances. Those kinds of instruments are being developed, so there is a lot of capacity for growth.”
Rachel Pleasant is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at rpleasant@charlestonbusiness.com.
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