Buoy ocean South Lake Tahoe City Homewood
A buoy is a floating device that can have many purposes. It can be anchored (stationary) or allowed to drift with the sea wave. In the area of South Lake Tahoe, there are many Kinds of Buoys to safe and help boaters, visitors and all kind of people surrounding.
Buoy Types on the ocean of South Lake Tahoe City Homewood
Whether they are drifting or moored, data buoys measure and transmit automatically, in a predictable and controlled way, communicating in real time via satellite telecommunication systems.
Data buoy observations make significant contributions to our ability to model, understand and describe global weather and climate on all time and space scales. The data collected complements or validates data from other platforms, such as from Voluntary Observing Ships or weather satellites.
Drifting and moored data buoys are now generally accepted as a very cost-effective means for obtaining meteorological and oceanographic data from remote ocean areas. There are many different types of drifting buoys and moored buoys used by the DBCP depending on the application and measurements needed in different areas of the ocean…
Moored buoys, deployed by various nations in their coastal waters, serve as instrumented platforms for making automated weather and oceanographic observations. The National Data Buoy Center (NDBC), part of the NOAA National Weather Service, operates approximately 70 moored buoys in the coastal and offshore waters of the western Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific Ocean from the Bering Sea to southern California, around the Hawaiian Islands, and in the South Pacific, as well as the Great Lakes.
Buoys are equipped with accelerometers or inclinometers that measure the heave acceleration or the vertical displacement provided to the buoy by waves passing during a specified time period. An onboard computer uses statistical wave models to process these measurements and generate wind-sea and swell data that are then transmitted to shore stations.
These data include significant wave height, average wave period, and dominant wave period during each 20-minute sampling interval. Selected buoys also measure directional wave data, such as mean wave direction.
The modern drifter is a high-tech version of the “message in a bottle”. It consists of a surface buoy and a subsurface drogue (sea anchor), attached by a long, thin tether. The buoy measures temperature and other properties, and has a transmitter to send the data to passing satellites. The drogue dominates the total area of the instrument and is centered at a depth of 15 meters beneath the ocean surface.
Meanwhile, the Ice Buoys have been used extensively in Arctic and Antarctic regions to track ice movement and are available commercially for deployment by ships or aircraft. Such buoys are equipped with low-temperature electronics and lithium batteries that can operate at temperatures down to -50°C. In addition to the regularly computed Argos locations, the ice buoys can be equipped with satellite navigation receivers (e.g. GPS) which can compute even more accurate positions.
There are in the ocean too, Tropical Moored Buoys; A major part of the DBCP’s moored buoy network is the Tropical Moored Buoy Implementation Panel array, which has arrays of moorings in each ocean basin and is used to monitor large-scale phenomenon such as El Niño and the Southern Oscillation, showing the importance in the annual variability of global climate.
And finally, there are Wave Buoys. Many different sorts of Wave Buoys exist to capture and model information about ocean dynamics on the surface. These buoys measure the frequency and size of wave energy (known as the spectra) from which significant wave height, dominant wave period, and average wave period are derived.
Even the direction of wave propagation is measured on many moored buoys. This information can be used to greatly improve the prediction and warnings for dangerous storms in the area of South Lake Tahoe City Homewood or another site.