Gliderpalooza 2013 to modelpalooza 2014: Joint U.S. & Canadian ocean glider operations supporting multidisciplinary scientific research and education

Gliderpalooza represented a grass-roots coordinated field demonstration of ocean observing technologies spanning the eastern seaboard of North America. The overarching goal was to coordinate disparate ocean research efforts, funded by disparate programs from a variety of agencies to demonstrate continental scale coordination of various ocean observing technologies to sample ecologically relevant scales. The coordinated data from satellites, HF-Radar surface currents [1], moorings, drifters and models was focused on and around the distributed deployment of Slocum gliders. The seven science and technical goals were to: 1) provide a unique data set the modelers can use for years to come (real-time & hindcast) 2) provide a standardized dataset over ecological scales and information on fish/mammal migrations 3) provide a 3-D snapshot of the MAB cold pool 4) provide an extensive distributed instrumented network through the peak period of fall storms, demonstrating a community "surge" capacity 5) provide one, of many demonstrations, of the potential U.S. national glider network 6) proof of data flow throughput to the Global Telecommunications System (GTS) via DMAC and 7) engage undergraduates in ocean observing efforts. During the summer and fall of 2014, the Gliderpalooza team will once again work together, but with several additions to the group, the geographical scope will cover Texas to Newfoundland. There will be more than 30 glider deployments that will be assimilated by seven numerical ocean models. Acquisition of this massive data set of water column profiles will permit evaluation of the accuracy of the models, especially in the coastal zone. Additionally, new online educational tools developed through the NSF's Ocean Observatory Initiative (OOI) will be used to by students in the undergraduate classroom to analyze, compare and contrast the glider data in real-time during the fall 2014 semester.