Chilean Tsunami Mooring

On December 6, 2004, the Stratus 5 cruise participants redeployed a malfunctioning tsunami mooring (the only tsunami buoy in the Southern Hemisphere) for the Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service of the Navy of Chile (SHOA).  The buoy is located near 19° 40’ S, 74° 50’ W.  This buoy is part of a system to help warn people along the west coast of South America about an approaching tsunami.  The buoy was deployed approximately 200 miles off the coast of Chile. The ship hovered over the location while the buoy was hoisted by a crane and lowered into the water.  The buoy is anchored to a railroad wheel, which took approximately one hour to sink to the bottom of the ocean. The seafloor bottom pressure recorder is a device that detects the slightest tsunami, as small as one centimeter, and sends messages back to the moored surface buoy for real-time communications.  An acoustic link allows data to be transmitted from the bottom pressure recorder to the surface buoy.  The data are then relayed via satellite and the information is sent to tsunami warning centers.  The ship remained in position for a few hours to ensure the tsunami buoy and ground pressure recorders were communicating.

The Chilean tsunami buoy immediately after deployment.

Dr. Diane Stanitski of NOAA’s Office of Global Programs played a lead role in this effort on the NOAA cruise. Prof. Stanitski, a climatologist and member of the faculty at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, is serving on a two year Intergovernmental Personnel Act assignment at NOAA with responsibility for sea based observations of El Nino, climate change, tsunami detection and other areas.  Prof. Stanitski, who has been a regular speaker at Climate Institute events, can be reached at diane.stanitski@noaa.gov.

Deployment of the Chilean tsunami buoy.

The bottom pressure recorder and its anchor (an old railroad wheel).

More:

The Tsunami Tragedy: Possible Lessons for the Battle against Climate Change and Sea Level Rise