Partnerships and Collaborations

The Global Drifter Program (GDP) benefits from strong collaborations and international partnerships. The principal scientists, Luca Centurioni and Verena Hormann at the Lagrangian Drifter Laboratory (LDL) at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Rick Lumpkin at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML), are active participants in many international programs, and through their scientific diplomacy, they are able to connect with science agencies throughout the world. The deployment and use of drifters benefit both countries’ interests and the larger global array.

Sid Thurston at NOAA’s Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing (GOMO) program  helps to introduce and sanction additional international partnerships in support of NOAA’s GOMO objectives. GOMO is the parent program of the GDP and also the Research Moored Array for African-Asian-Australian Monsoon Analysis and Prediction (RAMA) array and the Shipboard Automated Meteorological and Oceanographic System (SAMOS). All of these programs support NOAA’s weather and extreme events prediction mission. Through Dr. Thurston’s leadership and the LDL’s participation in the WMO-IOC Data Buoy Cooperation Panel (DBCP), outreach and capability-building generate interest and partnerships throughout the Indo-Pacific, enabling sampling in these remote ocean environments.

Deployments continue to be conducted by partners around the world despite the virus pandemic. As an example, the GDP’s partners in New Zealand will deploy about 20 drifters in their trek from Freemantle to the Southeast Indian Ocean, and academic partners from the University of New South Wales will deploy drifters off the eastern Australian coast.

Visit our deployment summary.