Scientific Objectives. Oceans exert a pervasive influence on the Earth’s environment, most notably as a regulator of climate. Understanding the link between natural and anthropogenic processes and ocean circulation is essential for predicting the magnitude and impact of future changes in Earth’s climate. In this respect, the knowledge of deep water circulation close to the seafloor (i.e., water currents at the Benthic Boundary Layer) is a fundamental objective. More generally, understanding the interactions between ocean, biosphere and geosphere (lithosphere, and solid earth below), leading to natural hazards (e.g., tsunami, seismicity, submarine landslides) or environmental changes (e.g., sea-level, ecosystem changes, greenhouse gas budget) is one of the main scientific challenges for the next few decades. To accomplish this goal, long time-series measurements of critical parameters, such as those collected using deep sea observatories and water column Eulerian observatories, are needed to supplement traditional seagoing investigations. These observatories will have power and communication capabilities and provide support for spatially distributed sensing systems and mobile platforms. Sensors and instruments will cover the whole water column, potentially extending the observation capabilities from below the seafloor up to the air-sea interface. Deep sea observatories will also be a powerful complement to satellite measurement systems by providing the ability to collect vertically distributed measurements within the water column for use with the spatial measurements acquired by satellites while also providing the capability to calibrate remotely sensed satellite measurements. It is now clear that to answer many important questions in the ocean and Earth sciences, a co- ordinated research effort of long-term investigations is required. Experiments and research programmes, from the 1980s to the present, reflect the progressive enhancement of monitoring systems in the ocean basins. During this time we have witnessed the achievement and strengthening of the concept of “deep sea observatories” and the technical evolution of earlier, quite simple, stand-alone mono-disciplinary instrumented modules into more complex multi-parameter platforms with extended lifetime and performance. Much of deep sea observatory research is interdisciplinary in nature and has the potential to greatly advance the relevant sciences. Observatories networked at seafloor level will offer Earth and ocean scient...
Scientific Objectives. The deliverable: • states its objectives, specific technical areas, related (sub)task(s) and dependencies, as specified in the approved project proposal • meets the objectives as specified in the approved project proposal • closely addresses the specific technical areas that the approved project proposal describes for this deliverable • represents a suitable outcome for the resources applied to the (sub)task(s) originating the deliverable • can be used by dependent deliverables as stated in the approved project proposal • is suitable for use by its target audience (as defined in the approved project proposal: internal, funding body, standards, public technical, public non-technical) • is expected to have a high degree of success of intended impact (e.g. in standards, internal to the consortium etc) • is expected to lead/contribute to further outputs (for example, publications) • significantly advances the state-of-the-art at the beginning of the project
