To meet Indonesia’s ambitions to develop and secure the maritime economy of the country gathering 17,000 islands, the BKMG (Indonesian Agency for Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics) called on CLS to deploy an unprecedented marine meteorological system on the Indonesian maritime territory.
Deployment is starting
March 2022 marks the start of the oceanographic equipment deployments in the MMS Project. Keeping mark with the project schedule, after one year of designing and planning, the first 2 missions for drifters and floats deployments were successfully performed by CLS and accompanied by BMKG. The presence of BMKG onboard was also an opportunity for capacity building as they were trained to prepare, activate and deploy the instruments at sea.
The missions were held on the Karimata Strait – between the Belitung and Borneo Islands – and the Riau Archipelago, located in the northern entrance of the Java Sea and of strategic importance for Indonesia.
As a great example of institutional partnership, all deployments were performed onboard the passenger vessels from the “Tol Laut” Program (or The “Sea Highways”) an integration initiative from the Indonesian government that uses the sea as primary means of transportation; and one of the most benefited by improved forecasts to be delivered by the MMS Project.
A total of 6 drifters (SC40SVP-B from NKE) and 5 profiler floats (ARVOR-I and ARVOR-C from NKE) were deployed and are collecting information of ocean currents, atmospheric pressure, temperature, and salinity. In addition to providing situational awareness for forecasters and maritime operations professionals, this data will also be used to evaluate and improve the numerical models under development within the MMS scope.
Find out more about MMS Project
The deployments missions continue in full throttle and total of 15 drifters and 10 floats should be in the water until the end of the month, completing the first batch milestone
