ANNUAL REPORT ON NATIONAL GOOS ACTIVITIES (YEAR 2002)

 

1.       COUNTRY

ECUADOR

 

2. PRINCIPAL NATIONAL CONTACT FOR GOOS

 

CPNV-EM Byron Sanmiguel Marín

DIRECTOR

Ave. 25 de Julio, Base Naval Sur - INOCAR

Guayaquil - Ecuador

Phone:   5934 - 2481300 ext. 1200

Fax:         5934 - 2485166

E-mail:    sub-cientifica@inocar.mil.ec

 

3. MECHANISM FOR NATIONAL COORDINATION OF GOOS

INOCAR, Instituto Oceanográfico de la Armada del Ecuador

 

INOCAR, is the Ecuadorian institution in charge of coordinate the national activities related with GOOS Program, contributing with automated meteorological, oceanographic and tide gauge stations, regular oceanographic cruises, and oceanographic data acquisition buoys.

The web site is: (http://www.inocar.mil.ec

 

ERFEN, The National Committee for the Study of El Niño Phenomenon

ERFEN is the regional bureau for EL Niño related studies, the program has national committees in which INOCAR is the national head coordinator of many research institutions and ministers involved on El Niño research, forecast, and impacts management.

 

5. NATIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO GOOS IMPLEMENTATION

 

5.1    CONTRIBUTIONS TO CORE ELEMENTS OF THE OBSERVING SYSTEM

 

·         INOCAR has deployed 2 oceanographic (0 - 500m) and meteorological data acquisition buoys which transmit via Argos system. These buoys are planned to complement the TAO array, by sending data to the observation program.

 

·         INOCAR is in charge of the national network of coastal meteorological stations and tide gauges deployed along the continental coast and Galapagos Islands. The whole network components for ocean observing system of Ecuador are listed on Table 1.

 

Table 1

 

Number

Type

Parameters

2

Oceanographic Buoys

Oceanographic (0 - 500m) and meteorological

5

Automated Coastal Meteorological stations

Coastal-Meteorological

7

Coastal meteorological stations

Coastal-Meteorological

17

Tide gauges

Sea level

3

Automated tide gauges

Sea level

2

Automated tide gauges

Sea level  (April 2003)

3

Annual Oceanographic Cruises

Physical, chemical, biological (0 - 500m) and meteorological

 

·         Time Series Station 10 miles off La Libertad;

 

·         Time Series Station 10 miles off Manta.

5.3    OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS TO GOOS

National Oceanographic Data Center CENDO, carried out the storage of oceanographic and meteorological data

 

6. CAPACITY BUILDING IN SUPPORT OF GOOS OR GOOS-RELATED RESEARCH

There are three institutions INOCAR, National Meteorology and Hydrology Institute, and National Fisheries Institute that received funds from the national government in order to increase the capacity building to achieve monitoring, forecast, and manage the environmental impacts from El Niño

 

7. IMPEDIMENTS TO PROGRESS

Financial Support is the main obstacle, especially to maintain the observational network, and capacitate technicians and researchers

 

8. INDICATIONS OF FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTION TO GOOS

 

8.1 INVESTMENT IN NATIONAL ACTIVITIES

The government financial support to increase the building capacity of the three major GOOS realted institutions was about 10M USD during 2002.

 

8.2 INVESTMENT IN NATIONAL COORDINATION

 

8.3 INVESTMENT (REAL OR POTENTIAL) IN INTERNATIONAL COORDINATION