The autonomous undersea vehicle Seaglider can serve as a persistent, long-range, distributed undersea sensor in antisubmarine warfare operation scenarios, providing environmental sampling automation, precision, and frequency valuable to the fleet.

A technique to rapidly assess mesoscale numerical forecasts is being expanded to assess amplitude, displacement, distortion and rotation errors. We are also adapting rapid image motion processing algorithms from the motion picture industry to develop a highly efficient, automated verification system.

This web portal gives boaters new, real-time, animated weather and oceanographic products to plan their trips on Puget Sound waterways.

Meteorologists and oceanographers use their scientific expertise to help computer scientists and software engineers design and build systems for users including the US Navy to carry out missions of national significance. The intersection of Operational MetOc with the cognitive engineering of products which fit users' real needs makes the Cognitive Engineering of MetOc Systems or CEMOS group unique.

DRI Uncertainty seeks to characterize and represent the uncertainty of the environmental features that affect active acoustic detection of submarines.

Environmental Visualization

Meteorologists, oceanographers, computer scientists, and psychologists study the human-to-computer interaction of Navy METOC forecasting, and are developing workflow tools for key decision makers and warfare commanders.

APL-UW is leading a consortium of glider developers in advanced research and development to improve underwater glider systems for environmental characterizations during naval operation. Improvements include a common command control and display/transfer interface for use across all existing glider designs—the GLMPC system.

The program seeks to determine the sources of low dissolved oxygen in Hood Canal and the effect on marine life. The program will work with local state, federal, and tribal government policy makers to evaluate potential corrective actions that will restore and maintain a level of dissolved oxygen that will reduce stress on marine life.

HS:METOC projects seek to improve the forecaster's ability to accurately predict and efficiently convey weather information to decision makers. Researchers study workflow, quantitative mental models, complex visualization, and intelligent agents.

We are evaluating the ability of trained sonar operators to discriminate targets from clutter using appropriate datasets for mid-frequency active and impulsive source sonar systems.

Students from the Art Institute of Seattle joined APL-UW polar scientists in Barrow, Alaska, to document experiments on the land-fast ice. AIS created a video, The Life of Sea Ice, for APL-UW educational outreach.

The initiative will develop methods to evaluate uncertainty of mesoscale meteorological model prediction; improve statistical methods for dealing with uncertainty; understand how forecasters incorporate uncertainty in their forecasts; and develop methods to integrate and visualize multisource information from model output, observations, and expert knowledge.

This Pacific Northwest regional association is a partnership of information producers and users allied to manage coastal ocean observing systems for the benefit of stakeholders and the public. NANOOS is creating customized information and tools for Washington, Oregon, and Northern California.

Naval Underwater Warfare Technology

The autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) Seaglider is the result of a collaborative effort between APL-UW and the UW School of Oceanography. These small, free-swimming vehicles can gather environmental data from the ocean for months at a time and transmit it to shore in near-real time via satellite data telemetry.

Sonar Simulation Toolset (SST)

The Sonar Simulation Toolset is a computer program that produces simulated sonar signals, enabling users to build an artificial ocean that sounds like a real ocean.

A 3D animation, "The Important Little Life of Dylan Diatom," shows the plight of a diatom in the Arctic Ocean. This slice of Dylan's life, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and animated by student Anna Czoski, shows middle school students the role of phytoplankton in the Arctic.

Web-based forecasts are provided in the familiar weather graphics found in newspapers. Probcast adds probability information in ways that are most useful to the general public. For example, most people do not need to know the confidence interval of a temperature forecast, but they may need to know the highest temperature possible for a particular day. Funding for this project was begun by a Department of Defense Multi-University Research Initiative title, "Integration and Visualization of Multi-Source Information for Mesoscale Meteorology: Statistical and Cognitive Approaches to Visualizing Uncertainty."

Wavelets re-express data collected over a time span or spatial region such that variations over temporal/spatial scales are summarized in wavelet coefficients. Individual coefficients depend upon both a scale and a temporal/spatial location, so wavelets are ideal for analyzing geo-systems with interacting scales.