@InProceedings{AlmeidaNobrUrba:2010:BrEx,
               author = "Almeida, Roberto Antonio Ferreira de and Nobre, Paulo and Urbano, 
                         Domingo",
          affiliation = "{Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE)} and {Instituto 
                         Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE)} and {Instituto Nacional de 
                         Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE)}",
                title = "PIRATA Project over the Tropical Atlantic: The Brazilian 
                         Experience",
                 year = "2010",
         organization = "The Meeting of the Americas.",
             keywords = "Ocean/atmosphere interactions, climate and interannual 
                         variability, equatorial oceanography, ocean observing systems.",
             abstract = "An overview of the international PIRATA project over the tropical 
                         Atlantic and its impacts on the development of basin scale 
                         oceanographic research in Brazil are presented. In a nutshell, the 
                         PIRATA project is a consortium between Brazil, France and the 
                         United States for the establishment of a moored research array 
                         over the tropical Atlantic to monitor the ocean-atmosphere 
                         interface and the upper layer of the ocean. The array was designed 
                         to study the principal modes of interannual variability of the 
                         tropical Atlantic climate, namely the equatorial and the 
                         meridional modes. PIRATA data have been used by many, with more 
                         than 300,000 data files distributed via internet during the last 
                         ten years, with 97,000 files distributed in 2008 alone. The array 
                         was inaugurated with 12 ATLAS moored buoys along the equator and 
                         the meridians 38W and 10W in 1998, and grew into a 18 moored 
                         systems (see Figure 1) after the establishment of the SW extension 
                         in 2005 and the NE extension in 2008. In addition to the surface 
                         meteorological and upper ocean data measured by the ATLAS systems, 
                         the PIRATA project also counts with one ADCP mooring at 0N, 23W, 
                         tide gauges at S{\~a}o Tom{\'e} and Prince, and at Saint Peter 
                         and Saint Paul archipelago, in addition to pig backing sensors to 
                         monitor CO2 and O2, also indicated in Figure 1. In addition, the 
                         PIRATA array yearly maintenance cruises, done by each of Brazil, 
                         France, and the USA, have been used as a platform of opportunity 
                         to collecting extra atmospheric and oceanographic data. Such time 
                         series constitute an extremely valuable body of information from 
                         sparse oceanic data areas, which have been used to generate a 
                         growing number of research papers in the specialized literature. 
                         More than 85 papers have been published so far using PIRATA data 
                         during the last ten years. In Brazil, the PIRATA project has 
                         galvanized the interest of an expanding community of researchers 
                         and has contributed to increase the support from funding agencies. 
                         The uses of PIRATA data time series have also been instrumental in 
                         the country for both: ocean and coupled ocean-atmosphere model 
                         validation studies, and real time monitoring of Tropical Atlantic 
                         oceanic conditions relevant for seasonal climate predictions over 
                         Brazil. This talk also presents the Brazilian efforts to 
                         developing its global climate model, for which both physical and 
                         biogeochemical measurements done at the PIRATA array and during 
                         the oceanographic cruises are vital.",
  conference-location = "Foz do Igua{\c{c}}u",
      conference-year = "08-12 Aug. 2010",
             language = "en",
           targetfile = "Almeida_Pirata.pdf",
        urlaccessdate = "26 abr. 2024"
}