Australian National Facility for Ocean Gliders (ANFOG)
A glider fleet of 10 vehicles will be established. Initial priorities for deployment are those established by the ocean and regional nodes. A typical ocean application would establish glider tracks to monitor boundary currents such as the East Australian (Ocean and eastern Australia), Flinders (southern Australia) and the Leeuwin Current (western Australia). Gliders have the potential to make observations that span spatial scales from that of eddies and boundary currents to basin-width, and time scales ranging from diurnal, seasonal, inter-annual and to possibly decadal.
Benefits of using Gliders.
These gliders can be deployed up to periods varying between 3 weeks (shelf gliders) to 6 months (deep ocean gliders) to acquire physical, chemical and biological properties from cross shelf and across ocean transects. The gliders have the potential to obtain repeat profiles at much lower cost than traditional methods and have the potential to replace expensive and logistically difficult ocean moorings. They also offer the possibility of obtaining data under all weather conditions which is not always feasible using ship borne platforms.